North Shore

Margin: Liberal 30.4%
Region: Lower North Shore
Federal: Warringah (57%)/North Sydney (43%)

Candidates in ballot paper order

	PIP VICE Australian Cyclists Party ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS Greens JAMES WHEELDON Labor (bottom) STEPHEN RUFF Independent MOYA KERTESZ No Land Tax JILLIAN SKINNER Liberal (top) GIUSEPPE ROTIROTI Christian Democratic Party

The Liberal stronghold of North Shore extends from Manns Point east to Middle Harbour, taking in North Sydney, Kirribilli and Mosman on the harbour, along with St Leonards and Balmoral to the north. It has undergone only slight change in the redistribution, with a little over 3000 voters in parts of Crows Nest and Cammeray transferred to its northern neighbour Willoughby, with a negligible impact on the margin.

The electorate of North Shore was created in place of safe Liberal Kirribilli at the 1981 election, at which it produced a shock result with the defeat of party leader Bruce McDonald. Following Peter Coleman’s loss of Ryde in 1978, this made for successive elections at which Liberal leaders had suffered defeat in the face of the two “Wranslides”. In McDonald’s case the defeat came at the hands of an independent, North Sydney mayor Ted Mack. Mack comfortably retained the seat at the next two elections, but bowed out shortly after his 1988 victory in protest against the parliamentary pension entitlement for which he would shortly become eligible.

The subsequent by-election was won by a Mack-endorsed independent, North Sydney councillor Robyn Read. However, Read’s position was weakened by the redistribution that took effect at the 1991 election, in which the seat absorbed much of the territory of its abolished eastern neighbour, Mosman. Read went on to suffer defeat at the hands of the Liberal member for Mosman, Phillip Smiles, by a margin of 2.5%. Mack meanwhile had returned to politics by unseating Liberal member John Spender from the federal seat of North Sydney in 1990, where he served two terms before bowing out in 1996.

Phillip Smiles was compelled to resign as member for North Shore in 1994 after being convicted on tax charges. Robyn Read ran again at the ensuing by-election, but it was comfortably retained for the Liberals by Jillian Skinner, a former journalist who had run unsuccessfully against Mack in 1984 and 1988. An influential member of the moderate party faction known as “the Group”, Skinner became deputy party leader after the 2007 election. She has served as Health Minister since the 2011 election victory, but relinquished the deputy leadership upon Barry O’Farrell’s departure in April 2014. Skinner is now 70, and there was reportedly pressure on her to bow out at the coming election.