Epping – NSW 2011

LIB 8.0%

Incumbent MP
Greg Smith, since 2007.

Geography
Northern Sydney. Epping mainly covers southern parts of Hornsby Shire, along with small parts of the City of Parramatta and the City of Ryde. It covers the suburbs of Epping, Cheltenham, Beecroft, Pennant Hills, Thornleigh and Westleigh.

History
The seat of Epping was created at the 1999 election. It has been won by the Liberal Party at all three elections since 1999.

Epping was first won by Andrew Tink in 1999. He had been the Liberal Member for Eastwood since 1988. Eastwood had been a safe Liberal seat in the area since 1950.

Tink held Epping at the 1999 and 2003 elections. He announced his retirement in 2006. Liberal preselection for Epping was won by former prosecutor Greg Smith, who defeated former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward. She went on to win the seat of Goulburn, and Smith won Epping.

Candidates

Political situation
Epping is a safe Liberal seat.

2007 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Greg Smith LIB 18,283 42.8 -3.7
Nicole Campbell ALP 11,087 25.9 -2.8
Lindsay Peters GRN 5,229 12.2 +1.2
Martin Levine IND 2,327 5.4 +5.4
Simon Tam UNI 2,037 4.8 -0.5
John Kingsmill CDP 1,807 4.2 -0.1
David Havyatt DEM 741 1.7 -0.2
Christina Metlikovec IND 717 1.7 +1.7
Michael Bergman AAFI 528 1.2 -0.6

2007 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Greg Smith LIB 21,052 58.0 +0.4
Nicole Campbell ALP 15,253 42.0 -0.4

Booth breakdown
Booths in Epping have been divided into south, central and north. The Liberal Party polled 45.7% in both the centre and the north, but less than 37% in the south. The ALP polled over 30% in the south, and 22-24% in the centre and north.

Polling booths in Epping at the 2007 state election. North in orange, Central in green, South in blue.
Voter group LIB % ALP % GRN % Total votes % of votes
South 36.9 30.6 11.9 13,599 31.8
Central 45.7 22.2 13.1 11,377 26.6
North 45.7 24.6 11.4 9,612 22.5
Other votes 45.0 24.9 12.4 8,168 19.1
Liberal primary votes in Epping at the 2007 state election.
Labor primary votes in Epping at the 2007 state election.
Greens primary votes in Epping at the 2007 state election.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Although Tink (former MP for abolished Eastwood seat) was the first member; it’s composition is more that of the abolished seat of Northcott than Eastwood. Northcott was most notably held by the late Jim Cameron (father of Ross of the defective zipper) when not vacillating between the Libs & Rev Nile’s mottley crew; Bruce Baird & it’s last MP was none other than Barrie himself.

    At abolition, the northern extents went into the re-constituted Hornsby electorate. Some western parts went in to The Hills. O’Farrell used his superior influence as former party State Director to elbow then Ku-ring-gai MP O’Doherty into the tougher Hornsby seat & sitting member for the abolished seat of Gordon, Kinross, out altogether.

  2. The Liberal primary vote seems pretty low here in 2007, with significant votes for others. If I remember correctly the Independent Martin Levine was backed by Liberals disaffected over the acrimonious pre-selection battle. The NSWEC spectacularly misjudged his likely level of support when they chose to conduct the notional election night 2CP count between Smith and him.

    An interesting area for the Greens with good results at the federal election in these booths as well.

    The CDP’s 2007 candidate John Kingsmill is running again.

  3. Yes Nick; there was major Liberal fallout over that preselection. This is generally safe Liberal territory, especially in the most affluent central areas.

    Reasonable polling for the Greens & they may gain some further votes from ALP haemorraging but essentially of little longterm electoral consequence.

  6. Actually the decision of the electoral office to conduct the 2PP count between Smith and Levine dramatically demonstrated something important. The notional 2PP between Smith and Levine showed Levine winning comfortably. If all of the people who gave their first preference to the ALP had instead giving it to Levine, Smith would have been defeated.

    In other words, people who voted for the ALP candidate helped elect the Liberal one.

  7. I should add that I am unfortunately unable to find any independent running for the seat, and the pool of candidates is disturbingly poor. I anticipate intentionally voting informally this time around. There really is nobody there who merits my first (or any other) preference.

  8. Wherever that projection was, it was wrong – Smith was already on 49.21% of the vote before Levine was excluded. In other words, Levine would have needed to attract virtually all the Greens and ALP voters, and even then he would have needed to get brilliant preference flows from the various minor party voters who had given the ALP or Greens their second preferences, just to make it close.

  9. I live on the edge of the Epping electorate(Thornleigh).
    No evidence of any sort of campaign in this area – the Libs have it in the bag, Labor need to spend their money elsewhere.
    Greg Smith will likely push up the Liberal margin, from 8% to 15% or better – my prediction.

  10. The independent candidate here, Victor Waterson, was the One Nation candidate at several past elections in the area.

  11. You wouldn’t know an election is taking place on Saturday – no campaigning of any sort from any major party.
    I’m told that the Labor candidate has been fairly active in the other end of the electorate – the Epping/Macquarie University part, where she’d do well with uni students in particular.
    But otherwise, an easy hold for Smith.

Comments are closed.