THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

LIVERPOOL
Labor 30.6%

Liverpool is an elongated western suburbs electorate that runs from Warwick Farm through Liverpool, Green Valley and Cecil Hills to Kemps Creek, bounded to the south by Fifteenth Avenue and Hoxton Park Road. The redistribution has adjusted the northern boundary with Cabramatta, adding 4500 voters at Bonnyrigg Heights and removing 2000 further east, in the area between Chipping Norton Lake and Prospect Creek. In the south-east, more than 7000 voters around Lurnea have been transferred to Macquarie Fields.

Liverpool has been held for Labor since its creation in 1950, the inaugural member being Premier James McGirr. George Paciullo's retirement a year after the March 1988 election defeat unleashed a preselection brawl that would be raked over 14 years later when one of its two principals, Mark Latham, became the federal Opposition Leader. The other was the Left-backed Paul Lynch (right), who would eventually become the member in 1995. The initial vote produced a 48-all tie, with 29 disputed votes left in envelopes. These became the subject of a dispute which famously involved a late-night car chase across the metropolitan area. The party's review tribunal ruled that Latham had won by two votes, prompting the Left to launch legal action. This led the party's national executive to intervene by installing Peter Anderson, the former Health Minister who lost his seat of Penrith at the 1988 election. The ensuing by-election saw an 18.5 per cent drop in the Labor vote despite the absence of a Liberal candidate, though Anderson still prevailed against the strongest performing independent by 10.7 per cent.

Anderson had only one term as member for Liverpool before being toppled for preselection by Lynch. This coincided with a threat to Paul Whelan in his since-abolished seat of Ashfield; significantly, Bob Carr wrote to general secretary John Della Bosca requesting intervention on Whelan's behalf but did not extend the same courtesy to Anderson, who he was said to fear as a leadership rival. Damien Murphy of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Lynch was also assisted by Lebanese community identity Sam Bargshoon, who went on to challenge Latham as an independent in Werriwa at the 2004 federal election. Lynch and Bargshoon later fell out, and in 1996 Bargshoon signed a statutory declaration claiming the pair had visited branch members' homes to elicit false statements about attendance at meetings so they would be eligible to vote in the preselection (claims Lynch described as "crap"). More recently, Bargshoon has threatened to use the public funding he received as a result of his Werriwa candidacy to run against Lynch at the coming election.

Lynch's feud with Latham flared again when the redistribution before the 2001 election saw Werriwa assume territory from Fowler, where the branches were controlled by Lynch. As Latham told it, his Right faction rivals (namely Senator Steve Hutchins and Michael Lee, then the member for Dobell) colluded with the "soft Left" (including Lynch and the Ferguson brothers, Martin and Laurie, the latter being Lynch's brother-in-law) to have Latham run in Macarthur, a Liberal-held seat which the redistribution had made notionally Labor with a margin of 1.7 per cent, so that Lynch could take over Werriwa. In the event, an alternative deal was struck involving Right powerbrokers John Della Bosca and Leo McLeay (at that time respectively the state party general secretary and federal member for Watson) and the "hard Left"'s Anthony Albanese (the federal member for Grayndler). This froze out Lynch and the soft Left and kept Latham in Werriwa.

Lynch's parliamentary record has been rather less eventful, as he has failed to rise beyond committee appointments to the level of parliamentary secretary. He has nonetheless generated considerable publicity through his role on the committee overseeing the NSW Crime Commission, and for his unanimously approved caucus motion in May 2005 calling for a scheme to assess asbestos in houses to be sold or redeveloped, which was subsequently overturned by cabinet.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain