DDXX，你的甜心McKew快支持不住了 天外飞砖2010-08-18 06:26:20
Bennelong a horror show for bare-knuckle McKew
August 18, 2010 - 2:29PM
Battle for Bennelong ... Maxine McKew and John Alexander.
Two months ago, Maxine McKew's visions of ministerial office and an intimate alliance with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd turned into a white-knuckle horror movie.
Her leader was cut down by his own party in what she called a "brutish" factional power play, then opinion polls began indicating that McKew herself was in danger of becoming a celebrity scalp, and a one-term wonder.
Click to play videoMULTIMEDIA: Three years ago Maxine McKew ousted the sitting member of Bennelong - no less than Prime Minister John Howard. Now the voters of Bennelong are asking what their local member has done for them, and reveal their voting intentions for the 2010 federal election. This is an edited, representative sample of our conversations.
Now the white knuckles have turned to bare knuckles.
McKew, having enjoyed years of celebrity as a polished television professional - and then the euphoria of defeating a sitting Prime Minister, John Howard in 2007 - has lately emerged as a street-fighter to save her political career.
The online bookmakers, Centrebet, believe her prospects of holding the seat have fallen dramatically in the past few days. On Saturday, she was a $1.58 bet to win, with her rival John Alexander on $2.38. But yesterday, both were locked at $1.88 on the betting - with the momentum shifting to Alexander.
INTERACTIVE: Click on the map to see where the key battlegrounds are.
Last Thursday, she issued a press release which began: "Tony Abbott today publicly humiliated his hand-picked Liberal Candidate for Bennelong, John Alexander, by ruling out any funding for the Chatswood to Parramatta Rail Link.
"Tony Abbott today wiped his hands of John Alexander," Federal Labor Member for Bennelong Maxine McKew said.
"Yesterday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a re-elected Gillard Labor Government will invest $2.1 billion to build the $2.6 billion Parramatta to Epping Rail Link, a clear missing link in Sydney's rail network."
What the press release did not say was that for the past 12 years, a succession of Labor governments have made false promises about this rail link.
On the eve of a federal election in which both Gillard and McKew are scrambling, federal Labor has promised a massive dole-out of federal pork to pay for a state government responsibility.
There was also the snide reference to McKew's opponent as the "hand-picked" candidate, as if McKew herself had not been parachuted into Bennelong by the ALP machine.
Exactly how she became the Labor candidate for Bennelong is laid out in great detail in an excellent book, The Battle for Bennelong, by journalist Margot Saville, a friend of McKew's, published soon after the 2007 election. Saville had almost complete access to McKew's campaign and the book is packed with details such as this:
"Maxine McKew positioned herself outside Kevin Rudd's office door. Parliament was sitting, and she knew that the only chance of getting Rudd's ear was to lie in wait and walk beside him down the corridor. He came out at a trot and the two of them raced down the hall.
"I've got an idea and I've talked about it with Tim Gartrell, Bob Hogg and Mark Arbib. If you are willing to back me, I'm prepared to run in Bennelong," she said."
Mark Arbib. Bob Hogg. Tim Gartrell. Labor machinists.
Having got the support of Sussex Street, McKew only needed the nod from Rudd to get ALP pre-selection for Bennelong. She moved into the electorate, buying a house seven months before the election. The Sussex Street machine then swung into action.
Saville's book details a race-based strategy that Labor deployed in Bennelong to unseat Howard.
She describes encountering "a crack team of Chinese and Korean-speaking 20-somethings sent in by ALP head office".
Later, Saville writes: "I've had enough of participating in the exploitation of the local Asians as ethnic wallpaper."
Three years later, McKew's campaign is covered with Asian ethnic wallpaper.
On her website, we learn that her last speech in parliament, on May 27, began: "I rise today to promote the cause of Asian language education..."
Her previous speech in parliament, on May 13, began: "I would like today to pay a special tribute to hardworking community champions in the Korean community in Sydney."
Last Saturday, Kevin Rudd arrived to campaign in Bennelong. He and McKew visited a Chinese gathering, then had a Yum Cha lunch with local Chinese community leaders. Only local Chinese-language media were invited to report on the event.
The previous week, another press release announced: "This morning I met with around 100 members of the Eastwood Senior Citizens Club at Eastwood Railway Station."
Actually, it was the Eastwood Chinese Senior Citizens Club.
That same week, McKew trotted out the great Labor fabrication of 2010 when she claimed in a press release, "As Health Minister, Tony Abbott cut $1 billion out of public hospitals – enough to pay for 1,000 hospital beds."
This has been repeated hundreds of times via every Labor politician even though it isn't true. The Howard government transferred $1 billion from one part of its health budget to another. It never cut $1 billion out of public hospital spending.
On August 12, McKew issued a press release claiming the election of a Liberal government would "consign Australia to the digital dark ages... Make no mistake, the only way the Coalition can deliver its so-called network would be to build thousands of fixed wireless broadband towers across our suburbs and local areas."
The shrill tone of the campaign in Bennelong reflects the thin ice on which Labor is operating.
The most comprehensive opinion poll so far, conducted by JWS Research, which polled 28,000 voters nationally last weekend, found Labor would have narrowly won an election held last weekend, but Bennelong would have been lost with a four per cent swing against Labor. McKew holds the seat by just 1.6 per cent.
Internal polling by the Liberals reflects a similar swing, suggesting McKew is suffering collateral damage from the degraded ALP brand in Sydney.
She is also a problem from her opponent, often derided as "a tennis player" by Labor campaigners in Bennelong when in fact he is a businessman. John Alexander has been campaigning full-time for months and says he has door-knocked almost 9000 homes.
"The big issues at the grass roots level are over-development by state Labor and over-spending by the federal Labor," says Alexander.
People are telling him that development has outpaced infrastructure, government-funded social housing has added to population density, and local council controls over zoning have been over-ridden by the state government. High immigration has outpaced housing resources. Many foreign students, especially to Macquarie University, are resorting to illegal boarding houses, many of them with unacceptable crowding.
If the lines between state Labor and federal Labor are indeed so blurred in Bennelong, McKew is fighting not just for her seat but her political credibility.