THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

KIAMA
Labor 8.3%

One of the most electorally significant changes wrought by the current redistribution has been the 8.6 per cent cut in Labor's margin in this southern Illawarra electorate. Covering the coast from Kiama itself south to Shoalhaven Heads, its area has been almost doubled with the gain of 11,000 voters at Bomaderry from South Coast and, further inland, 1200 voters around Kangaroo Valley from the abolished Southern Highlands. It loses 15,000 voters in the strongly Labor urban area of Shellharbour at the northern coastal end, who go to the new electorate of that name.

Kiama was created when rural vote weighting was abolished at the 1981 election, and has been held by Labor ever since. The retirement of Bob Harrison in 1999 unleashed a four-way preselection struggle involving two candidates of the Right, solicitor Matt Brown (right) and Kiama deputy mayor Sandra McCarthy, and two of the Left – Sandra Herbert-Lowe, staffer to federal Throsby MP Colin Hollis (and wife of Neville Hilton, who was sentenced to four years imprisonment in 2004 for child prostitution offences), and Sharon Bird, a Wollongong councillor who in time would defect to the Right and win the federal seat of Cunningham. The ballot was won by Brown with 103 votes to McCarthy's 82.8 (after accounting for the affirmative action loading).

Brown became the youngest member of parliament upon his election the following March, having just turned 27. He was promoted to parliamentary secretary to the Roads Minister and Transport Minister in September 2005, acquiring further responsibility for police one year later. In December he raised eyebrows by appearing on a billboard bearing the message: "Ethanol. The good fuel proudly supported by Matt Brown MP". Few thought it a coincidence that the redistribution had brought into his electorate a plant operated by the politically persuasive ethanol producer Manildra, which owned the petrol station where the billboard appeared.

The Liberal Party initially nominated Trevor Fredericks, Kiama councillor and Jamberoo general store owner, but he withdrew in July as he was suffering from depression. His replacement is businesswoman and former Kiama councillor Ann Sudmalis (left). The Illawarra Mercury reported that the moderate-aligned Sudmalis won preselection over the Right's Paul Rowland by 27 votes to four, despite "strenous lobbying efforts" for Rowland by Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain