THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

EPPING
Liberal 7.6%

Epping covers suburbs about 20 kilometres to the north-west of the city, from Eastwood and Epping north through Cheltenham to Westleigh. Adjustments to the western boundary with Castle Hill (formerly The Hills) have removed 2500 voters around Beecroft and added more than 3000 around Cherrybrook; in the north, 3000 voters in Westleigh have been transferred to Hornsby. The electorate was created in the redistribution that accompanied the cut in parliamentary numbers at the 1999 election, largely out of the abolished Liberal stronghold of Eastwood. The inaugural member for Epping was Andrew Tink, who had been the member for Eastwood since 1988.

Tink's retirement announcement last year initiated a spectacular preselection stoush involving eight candidates, from which there were two clear front-runners: Pru Goward, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, former ABC journalist and confidant of the Prime Minister, and Greg Smith (left), the New South Wales deputy director of public prosecutions. Also in the mix were Ben Franklin, a senior adviser to Peter Debnam who had what Imre Salusinszky of The Australian described as "support among moderates and the Left", and Hornsby mayor Nick Berman, who shifted his gaze here after testing the waters against Judy Hopwood in Hornsby. The contest opened yet another front in the war between the state party's Left and Right factions, the former mostly backing the pro-choice Goward and the latter supporting Smith, who had been president of the state's Right to Life Association. Public endorsements for Goward were forthcoming from Alan Jones, Liberal federal director Lynton Crosby and former chief-of-staff to the Prime Minister Grahame Morris – though not from the Prime Minister himself, contrary to a claim Goward reportedly made to preselectors. Smith won public backing from federal Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews.

As the manoeuvring intensified, Goward's supporters loudly complained that Smith was the beneficiary of Right faction branch stacking among members of the Lebanese Maronite community. Former federal leader John Hewson claimed the Cherrybrook branch had experienced a membership increase from "something like 11 to about 191", which was flatly denied by party state director Graham Jaeschke. There was particular concern about the state executive's reluctance to close nominations; according to an unnamed candidate quoted in The Australian, this invited "potential branch-stacking from all quarters". Smith ultimately won an easy victory with 61 of the 120 votes, to Goward's 32. Fifteen votes were recorded for high-profile Ku-ring-gai councillor Adrienne Ryan, the ex-wife of former police commissioner Peter Ryan and a long-term preselection aspirant. Immediately after learning of her defeat, Goward was informed of Peta Seaton's retirement and the consequent vacancy in Goulburn, which unlike Epping is located near her home in Yass.

After Smith's preselection win, the government went public with a confidential DPP memo regarding the arrest of senior Crown prosecutor Patrick Power on child pornography charges, which it claimed implicated Smith in alerting Power to the police investigation. The government has also aggressively pursued the opposition over the substance of telephone calls made to Smith by Peter Debnam and Senator Bill Heffernan when recently dropped charges against an accused paedophile were reinstated, referring both matters to the Independent Commission Against Corruption. A further line of attack was Smith's failure to immediately quit his position after winning Liberal endorsement, though as Alex Mitchell of the Sun Herald noted, doing so would have left "hundreds of prosecutions and appeals in limbo" because Smith's boss Nicholas Cowdery was on leave overseas. Labor's candidate is Nicole Campbell (right), a Ryde councillor who ran against John Howard in Bennelong at the 2004 federal election.

Three days out from the election, Anne Davies and Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Labor believed vote-splitting between Greg Smith and independent candidate Martin Levine might deliver them an upset, although this was "dismissed as fanciful by Liberal campaigners".

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain