Anger as MP Craig Laundy ‘jumps ship’ on electorate for waterfront mansion
TURNBULL Government assistant minister Craig Laundy’s move out of his western Sydney electorate and into an $8m waterfront mansion has left him vulnerable ahead of the next election, according to focus group research.
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TURNBULL government assistant minister Craig Laundy’s move out of his western Sydney electorate and into an $8 million waterfront mansion has left him vulnerable ahead of the next election, according to focus group research.
In the days before Mr Laundy was re-elected to his marginal seat of Reid at the 2016 election, The Daily Telegraph can reveal he bought a luxury 900sq m four-bedroom house in Hunters Hill — with a jetty, boating facilities and Harbour views for $8.25 million — keeping the news quiet from the voters he was asking to support him just two weeks later.
Mr Laundy is now registered to vote in North Sydney — not in his electorate, which stretches from Homebush, Auburn, Silverwater and Sydney Olympic Park, to Strathfield, Croydon, Concord, Five Dock and Drummoyne, on the Parramatta River.
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Labor research, obtained exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, shows voters in focus groups reacted angrily when told Mr Laundy had quit their area, with some saying he was “too good for us” and had “jumped ship”.
But Mr Laundy, who holds the seat with a 5 per cent margin, said Reid had been home to four generations of his family and if he were still in his 20s it would be a 50-second swim across the Parramatta River to his electorate.
“I know my electorate because I spent my entire life growing up in it, living in it, working in it, being raised in it, being a member of my family in it, being married in it and then raising my family in it,” he said.
“If anyone wants to criticise the fact I now live on the other side of the boundary line and say that means I don’t understand the electorate I come from, I would point them to Concord soccer club, Burwood soccer club, Centenary Park, West Harbour rugby, a host of schools ... I have worked and garnered support for more causes in the electorate in the past four years than the Labor Party have for the 91 years they held the seat before me.”
Research in Reid, conducted by Labor’s qualitative researcher John Utting, found voters couldn’t name their MP but when shown a photograph of Mr Laundy, some said they had seen him at school functions and around the community.
The voters turned on Mr Laundy when told in focus group sessions that he had moved out of his electorate to live in Hunters Hill.
The results were bruising with reactions including: “He is too good for us”, “Why doesn’t he live where the people he represents live?” and he’s “jumped ship”.
Labor leader Bill Shorten’s team in NSW are already holding focus group sessions in marginal seats two years out from a likely federal election.
Labor NSW General Secretary Kaila Murnain said: “NSW Labor is getting campaign ready. With the federal government’s conduct, there could be an election any day now.”
Mr Laundy, an influential moderate-faction MP, was encouraged to leave the family empire, worth a reported $500 million, and run for politics by former NSW premier Mike Baird.
He denied he had plans to run for the safer seat of Bennelong, formerly held by John Howard, if sitting MP John Alexander retires at the next election as expected.