THE POLL BLUDGER
New South Wales Legislative Assembly Election 2007

THE ENTRANCE
Labor 9.7%

The Entrance takes its name from the short channel linking the ocean and Tuggerah Lake, the latter of which forms part of the its northern boundary. It includes the coastal towns of Blue Bay, Long Jetty and Bateau Bay, and extends inland to Fountaindale, Glenning Valley and Ourimbah. The redistribution has added new territory in the north-west, including 7500 voters around Ourimbah from Peats (the technically abolished electorate which has effectively been renamed Gosford), and a further 2000 immediately to the north from Wyong. In the south, 6000 voters around Forresters Beach, Holgate and Wamberal have moved to the new seat of Terrigal, while 4300 at Berkeley Vale on the south shore of Tuggerah Lake go to Wyong.

The electorate was created with the enlargement of parliament in 1988, when it was contested for Labor by Gosford MP Brian McGowan. Labor lost both Gosford and The Entrance, the latter being won by Liberal candidate Bob Graham. Graham initially won re-election in 1991 by 116 votes, but the result was overturned by the Court of Disputed Returns on the grounds that confusion over new boundaries caused many absent voters to be given ballots for Gosford. Grant McBride (right), an engineer and former electorate secretary to Gough Whitlam, won the ensuing by-election for Labor by 4.7 per cent, so that Nick Greiner's minority government needed the support of all three independents to stay in office. McBride became a parliamentary secretary when the Carr government was elected in 1995 and finally made the ministry in 2003 as a nominee of the Right, taking on the notoriously enjoyable gaming and racing portfolio. He will be opposed for the third successive election by Liberal candidate Phil Walker (left), a policeman of 40 years. Mark Nolan of the Daily Telegraph reported in May 2006 that Labor polling was understood to have shown McBride to be in trouble.

In the first week of the campaign, The Australian’s Imre Salusinszky reported that polling by both parties had Grant McBride in "a virtually hopeless position", with "one senior local Labor Party figure" declaring the seat to be "gone".

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain