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Ghosts of Howard walking the streets of Bennelong

29 Jul 05:49am

Filed under: Bennelong, Election 2010, John Alexander, John Howard, Maxine Mckew

It normally takes about two hours to get a sense of which way an electorate is going to vote. In Bennelong, the site of John Howard’s humiliation in 2007 where he became only the second prime minister to lose both his seat and the election, the longer you spend talking to voters, the more confused you become.

Howard's legacy, for good and for ill, hangs over his old Sydney seat. Illustration: John Tiedemann.

On paper, Bennelong should be an electorate which represented the peak of Labor’s 2007 landslide, which with a 1.4 per cent margin should revert to the Liberals in 2010.

That is not the case. The giant-killing former ABC journalist and 7.30 Report host Maxine McKew might have won by just 2400 votes, but there are signs this middle-class seat in Sydney’s inner north-west might be easier for Labor to defend than some blue-collar electorates.

Continue reading "Ghosts of Howard walking the streets of Bennelong" »

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Dave says:

01:00pm | 13/08/10

The problem with John is that he doesn’t seem to understand the difference between State and Federal issues. Yes the streets are clogged but this is very much a NSW Government and Hornsby, Ryde and Parramatta Council issue. To suggest that he can do something about this is misleading. His… Read more »
Dave says:

12:54pm | 13/08/10

Sadly wrong. On Monica Attard’s ABC programme, John Alexander indicated he would continue to commentate with Channel 7 during January. Is he serious about representing our seat, especially with his false claims that Maxine is strangely absent. The best part of the campaign though, has been his pamphlet which has… Read more »

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