Keneally still cradles hopes in heartland

THE overall result of the NSW election may be a foregone conclusion, but the battle for Newcastle is anything but.

THE overall result of the NSW election may be a foregone conclusion, but the battle for Newcastle is anything but, and that's probably why Premier Kristina Keneally visited the seat yet again yesterday.

It is probably the only one of the state's 93 electorates that is a genuine four-way contest between Labor, Liberal, the Greens and the local independent.

And even though it's traditional Labor heartland -- it's been held by the ALP for the best part of a century, except for the brief reign of an independent in the late 1980s -- history will count for little come polling day.

The sitting member is Labor's Jodi McKay, who was controversially parachuted into the seat prior to the 2007 election. In an interview with The Australian yesterday, Ms McKay conceded that her party would almost certainly be dumped on Saturday.

But she said that the notion of anyone other than a Labor member representing Newcastle would not sit well with local constituents.

"People understand we're likely to end up with a Liberal government, but the thought of giving the Liberals complete control of Newcastle would be abhorrent to most up here," Ms McKay said.

With a margin of just 1.2 per cent against the independent most likely to win, Ms McKay said many traditional Labor voters had expressed displeasure with Labor and signalled an intention to vote Green. "I've been urging them to preference Labor," she said.

The bookmaker's odds suggest Ms McKay's main rival is Newcastle's Lord Mayor John Tate, who has thrown his hat in the ring as an independent candidate, having been Mayor for the past decade.

There is no love lost between Mr Tate and Ms McKay, whom the Lord Mayor blames for "letting Newcastle slide". "You only need to look down Hunter St (Newcastle's main street) to know that McKay has failed the city," he said yesterday. "It's a ghost down. There should be crowds everywhere but there is simply no reason for people to come, and that's really hurting us."

On that point, all four candidates agree. Even Ms McKay admits the collapse of the GPT project -- a proposed $650 million retail and property development that did not proceed and led to the closure of the city's David Jones store -- hurt the local economy.

Liberal candidate Tim Owen also nominates the revitalisation of the city's business precinct as one of his top priorities if elected.

"The place desperately needs a shot in the arm," Mr Owen, a former air force commodore, said yesterday. He said he was pushing for the city to host Expo 2017, a plan backed by Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell.

Recent polling suggests that the outcome in the seat will be tight.

Unsurprisingly, Ms Keneally has visited Newcastle and surrounding electorates four times in the past fortnight, which suggests that the ALP believe that the Hunter could be the one area of the state where they stem the Coalition tide. On the other hand, Mr O'Farrell has only been to the Hunter a couple of times over the past month -- a fact that has been repeatedly highlighted by Ms Keneally in recent weeks.

But Ms Keneally was forced to cut short her trip to Newcastle yesterday in order to visit the Illawarra region, south of Sydney, where flash flooding caused millions of dollars worth of damage to hundred of homes.