THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

NEWCASTLE
Labor 15.4%

The electorate of Newcastle extends from the town centre west to Waratah and south to Merewether, along with the Stockton peninsula on the northern bank of the Hunter River. The redistribution has extended it further along the South Channel to take in an extra 5000 voters in Mayfield, formerly in Port Stephens, to which it also loses 1000 voters at Fern Bay north of the Hunter River mouth. In the west, 2500 voters at Waratah West have been transferred to Wallsend. The electorate has existed since 1859 and has been held by Labor for all but one term since the abolition of proportional representation in 1927. That term was the one following the Unsworth government's defeat in 1988, when a revolt against Labor in its Hunter area stronghold delivered victory to independent George Keegan, president of the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The seat returned to the Labor fold with Bryce Gaudry's win in 1991.

A member of the Left faction who has served in numerous parliamentary secretary positions since 1999, Gaudry was contentiously dumped for preselection at the coming election following intervention by Labor's national executive. As Damien Murphy of the Sydney Morning Herald describes it, Gaudry had been "regarded as a sincere plodder who made a nuisance of himself during the Carr era with a long-running critique of office-winning policies", prompting the Left to sacrifice him by surrendering Newcastle to the Right in exchange for the city seats of Londonderry and Toongabbie. The Right had initially hoped to recruit Newcastle lord mayor John Tate (below right), but this enraged local Left-controlled branches which continued to back Gaudry. Tate had not been part of the Labor grouping on council, had defeated the party's incumbent lord mayor in 1999, and floated the possibility of running as an independent at the 2003 election. Tate told Damien Murphy he had been approached with the promise of a position in the ministry, and claimed to have been told that Gaudry was planning to retire. When it became apparent that this was not so, and that the local branches still backed Gaudry, Tate got cold feet and rejected an offer to have the party's federal executive intervene on his behalf.

Morris Iemma and Mark Arbib then surprised everybody by having the national executive intervene in support of a different candidate: Jodi McKay (left), a 37-year-old former television news reader and public relations consultant. This the national executive agreed to do, splitting 13-7 in McKay's favour on factional lines. The reaction in local party circles was typified by former federal Newcastle MP Allan Morris, who wrote first an open letter to Tate criticising his intention to run for Labor, and then a letter to federal leader Kim Beazley decrying the installation of McKay. The latter was quoted at length by Alan Ramsey in the Sydney Morning Herald, including Morris's reference to a "desperate search for an alternative 'celebrity' candidate" when it became apparent locals would not wear Tate.

After many months of further speculation, including talk that he might stand as Labor's candidate for Maitland, Tate declared in October that he would run against McKay as an independent. Gaudry will also run as an independent, although he might have been damaged when it emerged he did not tell Morris Iemma of the explosive rumours surrounding Swansea MP Milton Orkopoulos, a colleague of Gaudry in the party's "soft Left" faction. A Newcastle Herald vox pop in September asking for views on McKay, Gaudry and Tate would have made encouraging reading for McKay.

The Newcastle Herald published a poll of 300 voters in the week before the campaign began, which had McKay on just 24.0 per cent of the primary vote. The apparent front-runner was Gaudry with 22.7 per cent, with John Tate on 20.3 per cent, the Greens on 11.0 per cent and the Liberals on 8.3 per cent. Damien Murphy of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the result was "a shock to Labor strategists who thought Mr Tate was shaping as Ms McKay’s main rival". The following week, 40 members of the ALP’s Carrington branch resigned en masse, announcing their support for Gaudry. The media delighted in noting that those resigning included Arthur Wade, a member of 72 years. McKay's prospects went from bad to worse on the last Tuesday of the campaign when she proved unable to identify the Premier of Queensland during a radio interview. This gaffe derailed a visit to the electorate that day by Morris Iemma, who also had to face anti-coal export protesters ambushing his car.

The Poll Bludger had earlier felt that McKay had a better chance than was commonly believed due to the split in the independent vote and the likelihood that most of these votes would exhaust. When this theory became untenable, the dilemma emerged of who to back out of John Tate and Bryce Gaudry. Preference recommendations announced in the final days of the campaign made the decision a lot easier, with Labor and John Tate putting each other ahead of Gaudry. This prompted Allan Morris to return to the fray, saying the exchange indicated Labor had "effectively given up" on McKay. The significance of the preferences was not lost on punters: the return on a Tate victory from Centrebet went from $5 to $2.40 in the course of the campaign, while Gaudry blew out from $2.25 to $3.10. In spite of everything, McKay ended the campaign a slight favourite on $2.35.

ASSESSMENT: INDEPENDENT GAIN (John Tate)