You've probably heard the term Whitlam being thrown around this federal election, here's everything you need to know about the electorate before you vote. Video by Maddy Fogarty
00:00We have to talk about the electorate of Whitlam, Glenn. It's certainly been the most in the news over the past few weeks.
00:07Yeah, it certainly looked like, I guess, Gilmore was going to be the one with a tight race there.
00:11It was going to be everyone's focus, but ever since, controversial comments came up from Ben Britton that had said last year.
00:19The Liberals then decided to sack him 48 hours after they came out.
00:24Then they have appointed their own replacement candidate in Nathaniel Smith, and then Ben Britton decided to run independent.
00:31On top of that, there's 10 candidates running in Whitlam, so I think people in that electorate are going to get writer's cramp filling out the ballot paper.
00:40I think it's been interesting, too, because this is the one electorate where we absolutely know there's going to be a new MP.
00:46Perhaps that's where all the chaos kicked off, where we had Stephen Jones announcing that he would be retiring.
00:52Do you think that? Is that where this has all sort of come from?
00:55No, I think it would have been just in the last few weeks when candidates getting dumped and replaced.
01:01It's never a good look, never a good way to run a campaign if you have to basically dump your candidate three or four weeks out from polling day.
01:09We've had a bit of a mix-up or a bit of a change-up with, I guess, the Nationals, the Liberals.
01:14We've had Nationals dropping out, and there are quite a lot of, I guess, conservative minor party candidates running here, too.
01:22What difference do you think that's going to make, or any difference at all, in terms of how people are going to be voting?
01:27Well, there's at least three, I guess you'd call them far-right candidates, certainly in Whitlam.
01:33There is the school of thought that they'll just effectively cancel each other out, that there is no single candidate that they'll all gravitate to.
01:42You'd have to think that, ultimately, those votes are going to have to come back to a major party.
01:47If you're voting far-right, I don't think you're going to end up voting green, ultimately, in preferences or Labor.
01:53So they'll probably all go to the Liberal candidate, Nathaniel Smith.
01:57It's been considered quite a safe Labor seat, even after there's been a bit of a redistribution into the Southern Highlands.
02:05Do you think it's still a safe Labor seat?
02:07Will we be seeing Carol Berry as the new MP?
02:10I don't think it's as safe as it might have been before.
02:13Certainly, the margin, I think, is built in part on Stephen Jones being there and being a recognisable face,
02:20whereas you've got a new candidate running, and no matter what the party is,
02:24that's always a risk that people don't have that association or that familiarity with them,
02:29so they actually have to work a bit harder to try and sort of get that.
02:33So I think it's about, notional margin was 6% from memory.
02:37It might even be several points lower than that.
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