THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

LONDONDERRY
Labor 10.9%

Londonderry covers an area of Sydney's north-western hinterland from St Marys and Mount Druitt north to Richmond. The redistribution has sent its northern boundary beyond the Hawkesbury River, adding around 8500 voters in Grose Vale, Kurmond and Richmond North from Hawkesbury, while 7000 voters around Bligh Park in the east have been transferred to Riverstone. These changes have cut 4.4 per cent from the Labor margin. The electorate was created with the enlargement of parliament in 1988 and has been held at all times by Labor. The inaugural member was former Manly rugby league player Paul Gibson, who won preselection at the expense of Faye Lo Po', future front-bencher and member for Penrith.

Gibson's political future appeared in grave doubt ahead of the 1999 election when the Independent Commission Against Corruption investigated claims he accepted cash and goods from a Kings Cross strip club owner and convicted criminal. With the cut in parliamentary numbers from 99 to 93, some powerbrokers were hoping Gibson's departure might ease the task of finding places for Paul Whelan and Jim Anderson, whose seats of Ashfield and St Marys had been abolished. They were to be disappointed, as Gibson was exonerated and returned to claim the safe seat he had reportedly been promised. His prospects in Londonderry were damaged when the party's administrative committee shut down two branches in which he was strongly influential due to branch stacking, and he became determined on a move to Mount Druitt, held by Richard Amery of the arch-rival "Troglodytes" Right sub-faction. The various interlocking disputes were ultimately settled when Whelan agreed to contest the Liberal marginal of Strathfield, with Anderson moving to Londonderry and Gibson accommodated in Blacktown (see the latter entry for a more comprehensive account of Gibson's adventures).

Jim Anderson served one term in Londonderry before his death on the morning of the 2003 election, requiring the election for Londonderry to be postponed two months. The ensuing preselection was won narrowly by Blacktown councillor Allan Shearan (left) ahead of Penrith councillor John Thain and Blacktown councillor Mark Greenhill. Shearan polled 52.3 per cent of the primary vote at the supplementary election in the absence of a Liberal candidate, although party member and former RAAF officer Boyd Falconer polled 23.6 per cent as an independent after campaigning with support from federal Lindsay MP Jackie Kelly. The Liberal candidate for the coming election is Hawkesbury deputy mayor Bart Bassett (right), who carries the baggage of the council's planned 43 per cent rates increase.

The opposition pledged early in the campaign to begin construction of the Bells Line Expressway M2 Extension, to run from Quakers Hill and Windsor in north-western Sydney to just north of Lithgow. Such a road would cut travel times from Windsor to Lithgow by half-an-hour, provide a safer route through the Blue Mountains than the existing Bells Line of Road and Great Western Highway, and allow B-double trucks a direct route west of Sydney. The promise puts the opposition at odds with federal Roads Minister Jim Lloyd; a spokesperson quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald said the project was "not viable, economically or socially".

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain