THE POLL BLUDGER
Victorian Legislative Assembly Election 2006

LYNDHURST
Labor 25.1%

Lyndhurst covers south-eastern suburbs about 30 kilometres from the city, including Bangholme and Keysborough as well as Lyndhurst itself. The electorate was created at the 2002 election upon the abolition of Springvale, which was won by the Liberals on its creation in 1976 before passing permanently into Labor's hands. The seat was held until 1999 by Socialist Left convenor Eddie Micallef, who lost preselection to 27-year-old Tim Holding (right), Waverley councillor and electorate officer to state MP Jan Wilson (who predicted he would be Premier by 35). Holding became Manufacturing and Export Minister and Financial Services Industry Minister after the 2002 election, before receiving a surprisingly strong promotion to Police and Emergency Services Minister in January 2005. The new portfolio has brought Holding considerable difficulty, particularly after it emerged police officers had been unofficially using a confidential database to access private information. Holding was widely pilloried for saying he did not read past the "first couple of paragraphs" of a memo calling attention to the breaches, because he had sent it back for redrafting due to "errors".

Holding's reputation as a tough player precedes his entry into parliament. In 1997 his Right sub-faction, the "Network", was the beneficiary of a vote-rorting scheme for Young Labor elections that led to the organisation being temporarily shut down. His preselection contest against Eddie Micallef ahead of the 1999 election was a predictably bruising affair, with loud complaints of Labor Unity branch stacking by the defeated Socialist Left. A report on Channel Nine's Sunday from 2003 featured a disguised interviewee who had been involved with the Network who admitted to involvement in 'an operation at the Downtowner Hotel in inner city Melbourne, forging identities to help elect Tim Holding to a party position'. In 2002 the Labor Alliance union of the Network and Greg Sword's National Union of Workers broke away from Labor Unity to form an alliance with the Socialist Left, one of the spoils of which was Holding's cabinet post in the specially created manufacturing and export portfolio. His accession to the police portfolio was in turn the fruit of a healing of the rift between the two Right factions. Holding's NUW connections made him a major player in the preselection challenge by the union's state secretary, Martin Pakula, against Simon Crean in Hotham. In the days before the local ballot Holding reportedly claimed Crean would get about 35 votes, when he in fact received 196. Holding was also linked to the successful preselection challenge against Dale Wilson by Judith-Coucard Graley in Narre Warren South, which led Wilson to complain he concentrated on factional manoeuvring at the expense of his portfolio.

Liberal candidate Gary Anderton is a 24-year-old poker machine venus manager, which raised eyebrows in light of Ted Baillieu's promise to cut maching numbers by 5500.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain