THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

PORT STEPHENS
Labor 7.2%

The inlet of Port Stephens lies at the centre of an electorate that covers 50 kilometres of the central coast, from the outer Newcastle suburb of Mayfield West up to Bombah Broadwater. Labor's primary vote in 2003 was in the mid-to-high 50s at Mayfield and Raymond Terrace in the south, diminishing to the low 40s at Nelson Bay in the north. A northward shift in the redistribution has accordingly cut the Labor margin by 2.1 per cent. Nearly 3000 voters north of the inlet have been added from Myall Lakes (at Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens, where the Nationals outpolled Labor by 6 per cent in 2003); at the Newcastle end, 5000 voters in strongly Labor Mayfield have been transferred Newcastle, and a further 2000 at Raymond Terrace have gone to Myall Lakes. This has been counterbalanced slightly by the addition of 1000 voters at Fern Bay from Newcastle, who split 73-27 in Labor's favour in 2003.

The electorate was created with the enlargement of parliament at the 1988 election, when Labor candidate Robert Martin won by 90 votes. This was overturned when the Court of Disputed Returns ruled that unsolicited government cheques Martin gave to local community groups during the campaign were a form of bribery. Martin picked up a 12.9 per cent swing at the subsequent by-election and the seat remained in Labor hands thereafter, despite being made notionally Liberal in the redistribution that took effect in 1991. Martin was succeeded in 1999 by John Bartlett, who is now retiring due to ill health. Labor initially preselected Aaron Beasley, a former Boeing maintenance engineer who was prominent in the industrial dispute at the company's Williamtown site. However, Beasley had to withdraw after being arrested for drink driving, and he has been replaced by Tea Gardens ambulance officer Jim Arneman (left), who was endorsed unopposed. The Liberal candidate is Craig Baumann (right), a former Port Stephens mayor who was himself charged (though not convicted) with drink driving in the early 1990s and in 2002. The seat was contested by the Nationals rather than the Liberals in 1999.

ASSESSMENT: LIBERAL GAIN