THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

NORTHERN TABLELANDS
Independent 30.0% versus Nationals

Northern Tablelands covers 44,674 square kilometres including a 150 kilometre stretch of the Queensland border, extending south through Tenterfield, Inverell, Glen Innes and Armidale. The redistribution has expanded it westwards, where it assumes 4000 voters in the Shire of Gwydir from Barwon, and southwards, where it absorbs 2300 voters in the Shire of Walcha from Tamworth. The electorate was created when Armidale was abolished with the introduction of one-vote one-value at the 1981 election. Armidale had usually been in Country Party hands, but was won by Labor in 1953 and again in the 1978 "Wranslide", when it fell to Bill McCarthy (going back a little further, Lieutenant-Colonel George Braund was the sitting member at the time he was killed at Gallipoli in 1915). McCarthy held Northern Tablelands for Labor until his death in 1987; his widow Thelma McCarthy stood for Labor at the ensuing by-election, but National Party candidate Ray Chappell won the seat by 2.6 per cent following a 4.2 per cent swing. Chappell went on to lose in 1999 to independent candidate and Armidale mayor Richard Torbay (left), who has since emerged as the "organisational leader" of the seven current independents. Torbay was resoundingly re-elected in 2003 with 82.4 per cent of the two-candidate preferred vote, his primary vote increasing from 44.2 per cent to 71.3 per cent. In November, Simon Benson and Joe Hildebrand of the Daily Telegraph assessed who the independents might be expected to support if neither party won a majority, concluding of Torbay: "door is open but will support Labor". In March 2006, Alex Mitchell of the Sun-Herald reported that Labor was considering offering Torbay the Speaker's job if it lost its majority. Nationals candidate Phillip Kelly (right) was until recently "a rural finance manager for a major agribusiness company".

ASSESSMENT: Independent retain