THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

CABRAMATTA
Labor 31.4%

The electorate of Cabramatta is located 25 kilometres to the west of the Sydney city centre, running from Lansvale west through Cabramatta itself to Bonnyrigg. The redistribution has pushed its northern boundary with Fairfield out to Orphan School Creek, and added the area between Chipping Norton Lake and Prospect Creek to the east from Liverpool. These changes respectively add 8000 voters around Canley Heights and 2000 in Lansvale. Another adjustment to the boundary with Liverpool removes 4500 voters at Bonnyrigg. The electorate will forever be remembered as the scene of one of Australian politics' darkest hours, when Labor member John Newman was murdered on 5 September 1994. After two mistrials, Fairfield councillor Phuong Ngo was convicted in 2001 of organising the murder, while two alleged co-conspirators were acquitted. Newman and Ngo had developed a bitter rivalry due to Newman's conviction that Ngo was involved with the Vietnamese crime gang 5T, which dominated the Cambramatta heroin trade. Ngo had run against Newman at the 1991 election as an independent and directed his preferences to the Liberal Party, of which he had until recently been a member. He joined the ALP in 1993 and helped establish a branch at Canley Vale, quickly building influence through fund-raising and mass recruitment among the Vietnamese community.

The prosecution case was that Ngo arranged the murder because he had undertaken not to seek preselection for Cabramatta while Newman remained the member, and Newman's determination to contest the 1995 election had made him impatient. However, it appears to be very widely accepted among local insiders that Ngo in fact had his heart set on a seat in the upper house, and he was supportive when head office sought to have Newman's vacancy filled by Reba Meagher (right). Then aged 27, Reba Meagher had cut her teeth (along with her one-time fiancee, Fairfield MP Joe Tripodi) through her role in wresting control of Young Labor from the Left, and had also worked as an official with the Transport Workers Union. As Young Labor president, Meagher had accepted an offer from Ngo in 1993 for his Mekong Club to host the organisation's two-day annual conference free of charge, despite the concerns of Newman and others that it was being used for laundering drug money.

Meagher was opposed at preselection by Ken Chapman, Fairfield councillor and electoral secretary to Newman, who scored 28 votes to Meagher's 32 in what was seen as a rebuff by local members to head office and the Right. She was nonetheless untroubled at the by-election held on 22 October 1994, polling 72.6 per cent of the primary vote in the absence of a Liberal candidate, and went on to thank Ngo in her maiden speech. Ngo's involvement in the murder remained the stuff of rumour for the next four years and he remained active in Labor politics, deposing Ken Chapman to take the top position on the Labor ticket at the 1996 Fairfield council election. There was some speculation that Ngo may have accepted a deal in which Meagher would eventually move to the federal seat of Fowler with Ngo filling the vacancy in Cabramatta, but this appeared to be refuted when Julia Irwin won the Fowler preselection with Ngo's blessing. Then in March 1998, a witness came forward at the inquest into Newman's murder with a claim that Ngo had asked him to kill Newman, and boasted of his involvement on the night of the killing. Ngo was subsequently arrested and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment.

Meagher meanwhile was promoted to a parliamentary secretary position after the 1999 election and to Fair Trading Minister in 2003, moving to community services in January 2005 and further acquiring Aboriginal affairs in November 2006. She has emerged as a favourite target of Sydney tabloid the Daily Telegraph, which makes frequent digs at her for representing Cabramatta while living in Coogee (she bought a house in Cabramatta in late 2004). The paper also hounded her over the resignation of a ministerial driver in March 2005, who complained she had him "running errands" and taking her to pilates classes. An earlier controversy came in 2001 when she called former police detective and government critic Tim Priest a "disgruntled detective" who made "all kinds of unproven and demonstrably false allegations" about crime in Cabramatta, for which she was forced to apologise.

In November 2006, at the height of a myriad of controversies surrounding Labor members, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that Meagher had written to Fairfield Council in March 1997 in support of a controversial development of benefit to Joe Tripodi, three years after the end of their relationship. The council later rezoned land owned by Westside Property Developments, in which Tripodi was a shareholder, to allow construction of a petrol station and fast-food outlet. This was done "over the objections of residents, businesses and the council's then environmental planner". The site was subsequently sold to Burger King and BP for considerably more than Westside had paid when it was bought from the Roads and Traffic Authority and Sydney Water in 1996. Meagher denied knowing of Tripodi's shareholding.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain