Kerry Bartlett Seat of Macquarie The Australian 2006

ohn Stapleton

PITY Kerry Bartlett. If you can feel pity for any politician. A stroke a a pen has turned the his once comfortable margin of 8.9 per cent into a 0.5 per cent deficit.

The Australian Electoral Commission's redrawing of the boundaries of Macquarie since the last election has changed the once lower Blue Mountains, essentially outer-western Sydney seat into a strangely elongated electorate which begins in the Blue Mountains and ends past Bathurst.

The historic seat, once home to former Prime Minister Ben Chifley, has re-incoproated some of the territory it covered in Chifley's era and has also taken up about half of Peter Andren's old seat of Calare.

What was once an electorate with essentially urban concerns has become a schitzophrenic half urban half rural seat which is difficult to manage and campaign in. The electorate has almost tripled in size to 12,000 square kilometres.

Macquire has lost Windsor, Richmond and the market gardening districts of the Hawkesbury River Valley, replaced by the coal minining city of Lithgow and the tiny, insular, working class towns which surround it. As well as the major regional centre of Bathurst.

Since 1984 it has been held by Labor for only one term. 

That may all be about to change. As the pundits describe it, a ``likely Labor gain''.

And Bartlett is all too aware of it.

He may not be that high profile in Canberra, but in Macquarie Bartlett's name and face is plastered across the electorate; on telegraph polls and bus shelters, in prominently placed local branch offices, on radio, television, in newspapers and in numerous pamphlets.

Not only is he facing a high profile Labor candidate in former NSW Attorney General Bob Debus, who has represented the Blue Moutains at a state level for 19 years, he is all too well aware of the swing against the government predicted by all the polls.

``I am up against it, at the stroke of a pen,'' he says. ``It is going to be tough, let's be honest. ``Being half a per cent in the red is difficulty and if there is a swing against the government, particularly difficult.''

Again, just like Howard, while everybody else is writing him off - and on paper they would be right - Bartlett is throwing everything into the fight and refusing to admit defeat. ``I feel this might be one of the surprises on election night,'' he says, optimistically.

While he has thrown himself into campaigning in the new parts of his electorate, including Lithgow and Bathurst, Bartlett is unconvinced that the Australian Electoral Commission took into account the community's best interests when redrawing their maps; turning what was once a stable electorate unified geographically and socially, into essentially two separate electorates, one outer-urban and one genuinely rural.

Generally regarded as a decent, hard working local member who has represented his constituents well, Bartlett remains hurt by the massive disruption imposed on him by the seat's radical redrawing. ``I worked really hard, I built it up,'' he says. ``All those people I worked with in the Hawkesbury, you get to know the people, you know the issues. They have all moved into another electorate.''

A little like his boss John Howard, the former high school teacher has left no stone unturned in his quest to keep his position.

Macquarie is one of the country's most historic seats. It has existed since Federation and was once held by former Prime Minister Ben Chifley.

Adding to the complexity of the campaign has been the death of the much loved folk hero MP Peter Andren, an Independent with little truck for either party. About 45 per cent of Andren's old seat of Calare, including 40,000 people, are now in Macquarie.

``It is going to be fascinating to watch on election night,'' says Bartlett. ``It is hard to tell what Andren's supporters will do.''

Anecdotal evidence suggests that around the coal mining town of Lithgow, Andren's supporters will return to the Labor fold; but elsewhere in the electorate the picture is less clear.

Campaign workers for high profile Labor candidate Bob Debus are quietly optimistic; saying there has been considerable resentment in the community over the level of Bartlett over-kill; with the community besieged by glossy brochures, pamphlets, billboards and radio and television advertising.

Debus was only pre-selected in April and has been outspent and out-campaigned.

He could have settled into a comfortable retirement in the picturesque Blue Mountains; living comfortably on a generous government pension.

But his party tapped him on the shoulder, believing his high profile made him the best person to oust Bartlett.

Debus says he was motivated above all by one compelling desire - to see the end of the Howard government.

``I am getting a strong sense that there are many opeople who are anxious for chantge,'' he says. ``I have done a few election campagins, and it is a long time since I have found so many people in the street anxious to talk about their desire for change.

``It's fair to say that the redistribution presented the Labor party with at least the possibility of winning the seat. I have been around for a good while and people in the party felt I would have the best chance of winning. And I do very badly want to see a change of the Commonwealth and I thought I would do my bit. I so badly want to see a change.''