THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

LANE COVE
Liberal 2.8%

Lane Cove covers a stretch of Sydney Harbour's north shore inland of the city, bisected from south to north by the Lane Cove River. Minor boundary adjustments have added around 2000 new voters from Ryde in the west and produced a territory swap with Willoughby in the east, to which it both gains and loses about 3000 voters. These changes have shaved 0.4 per cent from the Liberal margin. The seat was created when proportional representation was abolished in 1927 and has been held by the Liberal Party since it first contested a state election in 1947. In recent decades it has provided a seat for two Liberal leaders, John Dowd (from 1975 to 1991) and Kerry Chikarovski (from 1991 to 2003). Dowd served as Attorney-General in the first term of the Greiner government before announcing his retirement days before the 1991 election was called, reportedly because he had not been guaranteed his portfolio after the election. Preselection subsequently went to Chikarovski, law lecturer and daughter of Greg Bartels, a former party state director and mayor of Willoughby. Chikarovski held the seat until she resigned at the 2003 election after losing the leadership to John Brogden a year previously.

Chikarovski's successor was the Right-aligned Anthony Roberts (left), the mayor of Lane Cove and an adviser to the Prime Minister. With the backing of the party's head office as well as Chikarovski and the influential Bartels family, Roberts won 66 out of the 104 available preselection votes in a field of four candidates. Bob Carr remorselessly mocked Roberts in parliament in 2004 after he described himself as a returned servicemen with a "unique understanding" of World War II conditions, based on his eight weeks in the public relations unit of the Bougainville peacekeeping force in 2001 (quoth Carr: "Unless you were there in the tents churning out those press releases, you have no idea how tough and dangerous the work was there in the front line, keeping the Port Moresby Gazette satisfied each day"). He was nonetheless promoted to a parliamentary secretary position when Peter Debnam became leader in August 2005 (memo to Roberts: update your parliamentary website profile). Labor has again nominated its candidate from 2003, Ryde councillor Gabrielle O'Donnell (right).

Three days out from the election, Anne Davies and Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that "a Young Liberals 'flying squad' has been sent in to help the seat of Lane Cove, as the party moves into damage control to protect its marginals in the final week of the election". Anthony Roberts was said to have been "hurt by a report he was asked to leave the Longueville Hotel following an incident", which he denied.

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain