THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

MAITLAND
Labor 10.3%

The Lower Hunter town of Maitland is about 200 kilometres north of Sydney, and sits in the south-west of an electorate that stretches 30 kilometres east-to-west from the Pacific Highway to Hillsborough and Lochinvar. The redistribution has effected minor boundary adjustments that add 2000 voters from Port Stephens in the east, and transfer 6000 around Dungog to Upper Hunter in the north and 1700 to Cessnock in the south. The electorate was in United Australia Party and then Liberal Party hands from the defeat of the Jack Lang government in 1932 until the 1981 election, when Peter Toms was defeated six months after winning the seat at a by-election. It was then held for Labor by Allan Walsh until the 1991 election, which saw Walsh retire and a redistribution turn Labor's 0.8 per cent margin into a notional Liberal majority of 7.4 per cent. Liberal candidate Peter Blackmore survived a 6.3 per cent swing to win the seat before strongly consolidating his hold in 1995. Another redistribution at the 1999 election severely dented Blackmore's margin, and a 1.9 per cent swing to Labor was enough to deliver it to John Price, who had held the abolished seat of Waratah since 1984. Blackmore blamed the defeat on the party's refusal to allow preference deals with One Nation.

With Price retiring at the coming election, Labor has nomimated Frank Terenzini (above right), a Director of Public Prosecutions solicitor. Terenzini was preselected unopposed after the withdrawal of Tony Keating, the unsuccessful Labor candidate in 1991 and 1995. Former Liberal member Peter Blackmore (left), who is now the mayor of Maitland, confirmed speculation that he would run as an independent in early February, joining other local mayors John Tate in Newcastle and Greg Piper in Lake Macquarie. Damien Murphy of the Sydney Morning Herald reported in November that Blackmore had been "coy about his future but has had his problems, too: in 2002 he was charged with 11 counts of rape and sexual intercourse without consent of two women and carnal knowledge of a girl younger than 10 between 1974 and 1986. The charges were dropped in mid-2003 after a magistrate said no reasonable jury would convict him. He was awarded court costs". The Liberals are again running with their candidate from 2003, Bob Geoghegan (right), a Maitland councillor and Greenhills fitness centre operator.

Early in the first week of the campaign, the Newcastle Herald ran a poll of 300 voters which suggested Labor was in danger of losing the seat to Peter Blackmore. After distribution of the 11.3 per cent undecided, Blackmore was in second place with 26.7 per cent to Liberal candidate Bob Geoghegan’s 22.2 per cent, with Labor's Frank Terenzini on 37.2 per cent. Under full preferential voting, such figures could be expected to see Blackmore overrun Labor on Liberal preferences; New South Wales' optional preferential system makes it a closer call, because many Liberal votes will exhaust. Damien Murphy of the Sydney Morning Herald reported the following day that voters were being "bombarded with testimonies", "not the least by the Liberal stalwart Milton Morris, Maitland's longest-serving state member, who has risked party expulsion by publicly declaring support for Blackmore". A week earlier, the Newcastle Herald reported that a Liberal Party poll conducted "late last year" showed Blackmore polling 36 per cent to Labor's 30 per cent and the Liberals' 20 per cent.

ASSESSMENT: INDEPENDENT GAIN (Peter Blackmore)