THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

BALLINA
Nationals 9.4%

Ballina is the state's second northernmost coastal electorate, with Tweed separating it from Queensland. Its main population centres are the coastal towns of Byron Bay in the north and Ballina in the south. This area includes farmland and rural communities that have kept the seat in National Party hands, along with counter-cultural elements who boosted the Greens to 19.6 per cent in 2003 (their third best result). The redistribution has added 0.4 per cent to the Nationals through the addition of 700 new voters at Wardell in the south (formerly in Clarence), and the removal of 2000 voters at Pottsville Beach to Tweed in the north.

The seat was created with the enlargement of parliament in 1988 and has since been held by former accountant Don Page (left), whose grandfather Earle Page briefly served as a Country Party Prime Minister in April 1939. Page the younger was a parliamentary secretary during the Greiner-Fahey government, and made the front bench when the Coalition entered opposition in 1995. He became deputy Nationals leader in 2003, after failing in a pitch for the leadership, and currently holds the shadow portfolios of skills development and training, state development, regional development and the north coast.

On October 8, Linda Silmalis of the Sunday Telegraph reported that a poll of 350 voters conducted for Labor by UMR Research had Labor set to win the seat with a swing of 11 per cent, with Page on 40 per cent, Labor on 33 per cent and the Greens on 18 per cent. Labor's candidate is Melanie Doriean (right), a former teacher and current education administrator.

ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain