THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

RIVERSTONE
Labor 13.4%

Riverstone is located in Sydney's north-western suburbs, extending from Quakers Hill up the Blacktown-Richmond railway to Windsor. The redistribution has dramatically redrawn the electorate due to the creation of the new seat of Toongabbie, which takes 18,000 voters in the strong Labor area around Lalor Park from Riverstone. It has been compensated with 7000 voters around Bligh Park from Londonderry in the west, 4500 around Windsor from Liberal-held Hawkesbury in the north and 1500 at Dean Park from Mount Druitt in the south. The changes have cut Labor's margin by 2.7 per cent.

Riverstone has been held for Labor since its creation in 1981, and has been a regular focal point of struggles within the party. One such episode followed the cut in parliamentary numbers in 1991, which produced a scramble among Labor MPs for the reduced number of safe seats. The member at that time was Richard Amery, a figurehead of the Right sub-faction known as the "Troglodytes". With the margin in Riverstone cut from 7.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent by the redistribution, Amery's faction wished for him to be accommodated in the safer seat of Mount Druitt, and for Riverstone to be contested by Pam Allan of the Left, whose seat of Wentworthville had been abolished. The Left argued that Amery should stay put and that Allan should get a safer seat due to the party's commitment to female representation. The situation was resolved when the Right's John Aquilina (right) volunteered to contest Riverstone, making his own safe seat of Blacktown available to Allan. There were also suggestions ahead of the 1999 election that Aquilina would move back to Blacktown to make way for Paul Gibson, but Gibson was at that time insisting on Mount Druitt and was eventually himself accommodated in Blacktown.

Aquilina first entered parliament in 1981, and served as a minister in the Unsworth government from 1986 to 1988. He was Shadow Education Minister throughout the period of opposition, and maintained the portfolio until 2001. His tenure ended not longer after he told parliament of the discovery of a 15-year-old student's plan to conduct a massacre at a school, which it soon emerged was Cecil Hills High. Staff from both Aquilina and Bob Carr's offices told the media the student had access to a firearm. This turned out to be false, prompting the resignation of Aquilina's press secretary. It also emerged that the nature of the student's diary entries had been exaggerated. Aquilina told parliament he had never said a gun was involved, when he had in fact done so on the radio two days earlier. The boy subsequently gave his side of the story on national television, and a wrangle followed between his family and the government over the amount of compensation he would receive. Aquilina was replaced in education by Ryde MP John Watkins, and moved to the fair trading and land and water conservation portfolios. He was dropped from the ministry altogether after the 2003 election. The Liberals have again nominated their candidate from 2003, education administrator and former high school teacher Kevin Conolly (left).

The opposition pledged in week two of 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