THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

DUBBO
Independent 0.3% versus Nationals

The city of Dubbo is located at the northern end of a 20,000 square kilometre electorate that extends south through the shires of Parkes and Forbes. The latter has been added by the redistribution following the abolition of Lachlan, for a gain of 7000 voters; in the east, a swap of territory with Orange has added 2500 voters in the Orange local government area and removed 5000 in the Shire of Wellington. Dubbo frequently changed hands between Labor and the Country Party from 1930 to 1959, but the decline of farm and railway labour made Labor less competitive over time. The Liberals held the seat from 1959 until 1981, when Gerry Peacocke won it for the National Party upon the retirement of recently deposed Liberal leader John Mason. Peacocke, who famously described then-Premier John Fahey as a "gutless little wimp" after a reporter told him he had been dumped from cabinet, held the seat until his retirement in 1999.

The Nationals subsequently preselected local talkback radio host Richard Mutton, but long-serving Dubbo mayor Tony McGrane ran against him as an independent and won by just 14 votes. McGrane had a less nervous time of it at the March 2003 election, when he outpolled the Nationals candidate 41.6 per cent to 38.2 per cent and prevailed by 5.5 per cent after preferences. McGrane succumbed to cancer in September 2004 and a by-election followed on November 20. The Nationals preselection went to Jan Cowley, the party’s Parkes Electoral Council secretary, who was chosen ahead of former mayor Greg Matthews and Gerry Peacocke's son Sam. However, the Nationals were again humiliated by an independent candidate, this time deputy mayor Dawn Fardell (right) who ran with the backing of Richard Torbay, Peter Draper (respectively the independent state members for Northern Tablelands and Tamworth), Peter Andren and Tony Windsor (independent federal members for Calare and New England). Fardell achieved a very similar 5.2 per cent margin after preferences to that of McGrane in 2003, outpolling Cowley 50.6 per cent to 42.4 per cent on the primary vote in the absence of a Labor candidate.

For the coming election, Greg Matthews (left) has succeeded where he failed in 2004 by winning Nationals preselection. According to the Daily Liberal, one factor running against Matthews the first time around was that McGrane's backers had threatened to throw their weight behind an independent if he was given the nod, as they perceived him to be linked to Richard Mutton. Another Dubbo councillor, Ben Shields, has expressed interest in running as a Liberal candidate, as he had done before the by-election when the party declined to enter the fray. Fardell was unlikely to have been too pleased when the Daily Telegraph named her in November as "likely to vote with Labor" in the event that independents held the balance of power.

ASSESSMENT: Independent retain