THE POLL BLUDGER
House of Representatives Election 2007

WENTWORTH Liberal 2.6%
North Coast, New South Wales Click here for Page discussion forum
	DANI ECUYER Independent SUSAN JARNASON Greens DIXIE COULTON Climate Change Coalition JAMES ADAMS Family First JOHN JAMIESON Citizens Electoral Council JONATAN KELU Liberty and Democracy Party PAT SHEIL Independent BRADLEY MOLONY Christian Democratic Party GEORGE NEWHOUSE Labor (bottom left) MALCOLM TURNBULL Liberal (top left) PIERCE FIELD Democrats
Booth results at the 2004 election, with size of numbers varying to reflect number of votes cast. Click on image to toggle between two-party vote and swing. Green shading on the vote image shows suburban average weekly household income (the electorate-wide average household income figure is $1609, compared with a national average of $1027); yellow shading on the swing image shows percentage of dwellings being purchased (all suburbs are below the national average of 32.2 per cent).

After a century as one of the nation's most predictable seats, Wentworth entered the national spotlight in 2004 and again looms as one of the most intriguing contests of the coming election. Created at federation, Wentworth originally covered the entire coast from Port Jackson to Botany Bay, before assuming more familiar dimensions in 1913. It now takes in the mouth of Sydney Harbour and its southern shore from Watsons Bay and Vaucluse west to Potts Point, along with a stretch of coast running south through Bondi to Clovelly, and the northern part of Randwick. The wealth of the harbourside suburbs have made this a classic blue-ribbon seat, which has been held by conservatives of one kind or another since federation. Recent Liberal members have included Robert Ellicott (1974 to 1981), the Shadow Attorney-General who played a crucial tactical role in the Whitlam dismissal; Peter Coleman (1981 to 1987), conservative intellectual and father-in-law of Peter Costello; John Hewson (1987 to 1996), disappointing Liberal Opposition Leader; and Andrew Thomson (1996 to 2001), disappointing member for Wentworth.

Thomson was defeated for preselection ahead of the 2001 election by barrister Peter King, who in turn died by the sword in 2004 when Malcolm Turnbull marshalled his considerable resources against him. Turnbull had been spoken of as a potential prime minister since coming to fame as a young lawyer in the early 1980s, when he succeeded in blocking the British government's attempts to suppress former MI5 agent Peter Wright's memoirs in the Spycatcher trial. In the 1990s he emerged as the chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, adding conservative leavening to a favoured project of the then Labor Prime Minister. He meanwhile made his fortune firstly in legal partnership with Gough Whitlam's son Nicholas and later as a merchant banker, establishing business connections that contributed to his fundraising success as Liberal Party federal treasurer from 2002. Despite lingering resentment over Turnbull's description of John Howard as “the man who broke the nation's heart” on the night of the republic referendum, Turnbull's move against King won at least the tacit support of the Prime Minister, who in normal circumstances could be relied upon to support sitting members. Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen's recent biography reports that Howard “believed that a failed preselection bid for Wentworth held the distinct possibility that Turnbull would quit party politics altogether and step down as treasurer, deterring donors from putting their hands in their pockets”. After much “recruitment” to local party branches by both sides, Turnbull won the preselection vote by 88 votes to 70.

King subsequently refused to rule out running as an independent, eventually announcing he would do so at a press conference on Bondi Beach in the first week of the campaign. Despite vigorous campaigning attended by intense publicity, King recorded only 18.0 per cent of the vote and finished well behind Labor's David Patch on 26.3 per cent. While Turnbull's 41.8 per cent was well down on the 52.1 per cent King recorded as Liberal candidate in 2001, it converted into an unembarrassing 2.3 per cent two-party swing after distribution of King's preferences. The swing nonetheless contributed to a long-term trend in the seat which made it appear of dubious long-term worth to Turnbull even before the recent redistribution. As noted in an analysis by former Labor staffer Shane Easson, the electorate was going through a relative population decline that had forced it to expand in area at six successive redistributions since 1955 (the most significant change coming in 1993 with the abolition of Phillip, which previously separated Wentworth from Kingsford-Smith). There were only two directions in which it could grow: into safe Labor Kingsford-Smith to the south, or even safer Labor Sydney to the west. Furthermore, the latter would be the more obviously appealing option for the boundaries commissioners, as Kingsford-Smith was shaped by the constraints of the ocean and Botany Bay. When the latest population calculations dictated that New South Wales lose a seat at the coming election, the result was predictable: Wentworth shouldered its share of the burden by absorbing an inner-city area noted for post-materialism and a high gay population. This area, which included the balance of Paddington, the harbour shore around Potts Point and most of Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst, sliced the Liberal margin from 5.6 per cent to a decidedly uncomfortable 2.6 per cent.

Like no other electorate bar Bennelong, Wentworth has seen national issues assume local significance in the lead-up to the election. Turnbull won promotion first to parliamentary secretary with responsibility for water in September 2006 and then to Environment and Water Resources Minister four months later, confronting him with issues of great sensitivity in his own seat. The most significant example was the controversy surrounding Gunns Limited's proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill in northern Tasmania, which was contentiously fast-tracked by Paul Lennon's state Labor government. A campaign for Turnbull to intervene has won the support of celebrities including Cate Blanchett, Bryan Brown and Rebecca Gibney, along with businessman and prime ministerial confidant Geoffrey Cousins. In mid-September, Cousins embarrassed Turnbull by taking out advertisements in the local Wentworth Courier which asked: “Is Mr Turnbull the Minister For the Environment or the Minister Against the Environment?” Turnbull's other major source of publicity ahead of the election was his role in the burst of leadership speculation at the time of the APEC meeting. On September 11, Sky News reported that both Turnbull and Alexander Downer believed John Howard should no longer lead the Liberal Party. Amid speculation that Howard might be about to stand aside, Kerry-Anne Walsh of the Sun-Herald wrote of a “wild scenario doing the rounds” in which Turnbull would take the job if Costello proved reluctant to do so within weeks of an election. Subsequent reports spoke of Turnbull persuading a majority of Cabinet members that Howard should go, but of the idea meeting firm resistance from both the party room and the Prime Minister himself. Later in the day, Howard could be seen apparently chastising Turnbull on the floor of parliament. Two weeks later Turnbull was forced to rule out a future challenge to Peter Costello for the Liberal leadership, after earlier refusing to answer questions on the issue.

Labor's candidate is George Newhouse, human rights lawyer and until recently mayor of Waverley. Newhouse's legal clients have included Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon, the victims of high-profile Department of Immigration bungles that respectively saw them deported and detained for nearly a year. He is also a figurehead of the electorate's prominent Jewish community, which accounts for 14.1 per cent of its population against 0.4 per cent nationally. The community is particularly concentrated in the electorate's north-east, accounting for 49.4 per cent of residents of Dover Heights. Newhouse was head-hunted by Kevin Rudd and installed as candidate by the party's national executive, after the April national conference empowered it to avert faction-driven preselection stoushes by directly choosing candidates for 25 sensitive seats. Also in the field is former Sydney deputy lord mayor Dixie Coulton, who will run in protest against the Tamar Valley pulp mill as candidate of the Climate Change Coalition. Coulton was once a colleague of Lucy Turnbull, former lord mayor and wife of Malcolm, in the council's Living Sydney party. She left the group in 2003, saying it had become “tainted” by association with Turnbull and the Liberal Party, and announced she would run against Lucy Turnbull at the following year's lord mayoral election. Turnbull ultimately declined to run and the election was won by Clover Moore, state independent member for Bligh (now Sydney).

Malcolm Turnbull was thrown a line late 10 days out from polling day with the emergence of doubts about the validity of George Newhouse's nomination. Newhouse's resignation from the New South Wales Consumer Trader and Tenancy Disputes Tribunal – an “office of profit under the Crown” – was not received until the day of the formal declaration of nominations. Newhouse responds that the important thing is that the resignation was effective from 11 days earlier. University of Queensland legal academic Graeme Orr wrote on this site tells “an undated letter, possibly received late, allegedly back-dating a resignation, is going to be very problematic if he wins”. The campaign's other source of excitement has been the entry of investment banker and environmental activist Danielle Ecuyer, which attracted considerable attention as she is a former partner of Newhouse. Early in the second last week of the campaign, Ecuyer went public with an email from Caroline Overington of The Australian who told her, in what Peter Garrett might describe as a jocular moment, that she should direct preferences away from ex-boyfriend George Newhouse and towards Malcolm Turnbull, as it would be “such a good front page story”.

While Turnbull will be in real trouble if the anti-government swing is as much as current opinion polls indicate, there is reason to believe he has more padding than the notional margin suggests. In his aforementioned study, Shane Easson calculates an effective Liberal margin of 4.5 per cent after allowing for such influences as the “Peter King effect” and “potential Turnbull personal vote”. Figures from the 2004 election exaggerate the Liberals' weakness in the newly added areas, due to the party's lack of effort here at previous elections. In an electorate such as Sydney, the optimal strategy for the Liberals is to “play dead” in the hope that they might finish behind the Greens, who could then potentially defeat Labor with their preferences. This time around, these areas will be facing the full force of Turnbull's well-oiled campaign machine. Furthermore, as noted by Russell Skelton of The Age, the electorate is not suffering the soft housing prices that are biting in more suburban seats like Bennelong. Some sources have suggested the party has greater fears for Howard's seat than Turnbull's, although reports of internal polling have painted a mixed picture.

On the Monday before the election the Fairfax broadsheets carried an ACNielsen poll from an impressive sample of 900 Wentworth voters, showing Newhouse leading Turnbull 52-48 on two-party preferred, with primary votes of 45 per cent for Turnbull, 36 per cent for Newhouse and 17 per cent for Greens candidate Susan Jarnason. A week earlier, the Sunday Telegraph published a Galaxy poll of 800 respondents showing Malcolm Turnbull and George Newhouse locked at 50-50 on two-party preferred. Primary vote figures were Liberal 44 per cent, Labor 36 per cent and Greens 14 per cent. Michael Kroger told Lateline a week earlier that “people in the Liberal Party and around the traps generally” were “more and more confident that the two high profile seats in NSW of Bennelong and Malcolm Turnbull's seat in Wentworth will be won by the Government” – although his fellow interviewee Rod Cameron wasn't so sure. In August, Labor was variously said to have a lead on the primary vote of 47-42 and 44-42. Neither gelled with a September report from the Sydney Morning Herald which had sources from both major parties speaking of 20 per cent support for the Greens. Conversely, The Australian quoted a “senior Liberal source” in late September saying Turnbull was “not in trouble”, and should thus approve the Tamar Valley pulp mill to shore up the Liberal member in Bass.