Opinion article by Councillor Nathan Zamprogno

A Federal election must be called no later than May 17th. For a time, in our seat of Macquarie we enjoyed the limelight as the most marginal seat in the nation. Not any more. What happened?

Macquarie has been held by the Liberals for 31 of the last 50 years. In contrast, our state seat of Hawkesbury has been held by Conservatives for 91 of the last 100 years.

Despite this, Labor’s Susan Templeman will be gladhanding for a fourth term with a margin that rocketed from 0.2% to a ‘fairly safe’ 7.73% in 2022. A redistribution has added the Lib-leaning suburb of Emu Plains to Macquarie, bringing Templeman to this election with a pruned margin of 6.3%.

It was telling thata recent polling put out by News Ltd describing ‘the 20 most key seats in the country’ at the coming election didn’t list Macquarie at all. What a fall! We’re poorer for it.

The reason is easy to understand. At the last election there was a swing against the Liberals of 3.66% (3.2% in NSW). The Liberal vote in Macquarie collapsed under Liberal candidate and then-Mayor Sarah McMahon with a swing of 7.58% – the worst in any ‘must win’ seat targeted by the Coalition.

By way of contrast, one seat over in Lindsay, incumbent Liberal Melissa McIntosh gained a swing of 1.3% to the Liberals.

Regardless of your political stripe, we are better off when our seat is a marginal one. Last election, both parties fell over themselves to pledge $500m to build a new Hawkesbury River crossing. This was because we were a ‘must win’ seat. Although they’ll deny it, there’s less munificence for a seat safely held or harder to win.

Now it turns out this sum is millions short of what is needed.

The winning stroke in this campaign for either Templeman or the Liberal candidate Mike Creed might come if they can pledge full funding for the whole Project.

Another is if either candidate can demonstrate they are prepared to stand up to their own parties to advocate for local concerns. The flight paths of the new airport would be one example. Another would be to reverse the designation of six of the seven Hawkesbury Postcodes (and all of the Blue Mountains) as “regional” for the purpose of overseas migration visas. A local realtor tells me this influx adds a 5% premium to the cost of house sales in the Hawkesbury, or an extra $87k to the repayments on an average mortgage.

I agree we should encourage new Australians to settle outside our major cities, but this designation adds fuel to the housing affordability crisis we share with metropolitan Sydney. The

designation should be changed.

We live in an era of rising cynicism towards the ‘two-party’ system .Independents like the so-called Teals made big inroads in 2022. Under the ‘mandatory preferential’ voting system used Federally, it is safer to make a protest vote for an independent or minor party candidate to send a message.

Your vote ends up with one of the two major parties anyway. Maybe that’s a good way to ‘make Macquarie marginal again’.

The federal seat of Macquarie following the boundary adjustments.