THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

TERRIGAL
Liberal 0.6%

Terrigal is a new coastal seat about 90 kilometres north of Sydney, created mostly out of territory from the existing seat of Gosford. The name change has occurred because Gosford itself has moved into what was formerly Peats, creating a very different new seat of Gosford. Terrigal contains more than 39,000 votes from the old Gosford, from Pretty Beach and Killcare north to Terrigal itself, along with 6000 at Forresters Beach, Holgate and Wamberal to the north. This has created a seat with a notional Liberal margin of 0.6 per cent, compared with the 0.3 per cent Liberal margin in Gosford after the 2003 election. The new Gosford has a Labor margin of 8.6 per cent, compared with Labor's 9.7 per cent margin in Peats. The Liberal member for Gosford, senior front-bencher Chris Hartcher (left), will accordingly be running in Terrigal.

The electorate of Gosford was created in 1950 and was won by the Liberals at every election except 1971, until the advent of the Wran governnment. Brian McGowan won it for Labor when Wran came to power in 1976, eventually moving on to unsuccessfully contest the new seat of The Entrance in 1988. It then fell to the current member, Chris Hartcher, previously the head of a legal firm. Hartcher was appointed Environment Minister in 1992 and has been a senior front-bencher throughout the long period of opposition. He is currently Shadow Attorney-General and holds the portfolios of industrial relations and planning. Hartcher is renowned as a "numbers man" and head of a Right sub-faction that has recently been in alliance with David Clarke, young Right heavyweight and upper house MP. There was talk that he might challenge Kerry Chikarovski for the leadership in the wake of the 1999 election, but he ended up joining John Brogden as the junior member of the leadership team that deposed Chikarovski and her deputy, Hartcher's bitter rival Barry O'Farrell.

Labor has been chipping away at Gosford in each election since Hartcher won the seat, and the 2003 election reduced his margin to 272 votes. Hartcher subsequently stood aside as deputy, enabling O'Farrell to return to the role. The ongoing hostility between the two re-emerged when John Brogden resigned as leader in August 2005, with Hartcher's numbers being an important factor in preventing O'Farrell's accession to the leadership. Labor has again nominated its candidate for Gosford in 2003, University of Newcastle education lecturer Deborah O'Neill (right).

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain