Maxine McKew Takes Bennelong
Knocking on 8000 doors, and sitting down for hundreds of cups of tea and actually listening to what the locals have to say, and doing it all without a crush of media and security in tow, really does pay off.
Maxine McKew has won the seat of Bennelong from John Howard. Her victory is the final grave marker in John Howard's political career.
For the first time in three decades, Bennelong has a new local member of Parliament, and for the first time in history, that MP is from the Labor Party.
Consider this : Bennelong was, until recently, one of the most conservative and safest Liberal seats in the entire country.
John Howard was comprehensively beaten by a woman, a Labor Party true believer and a former ABC Television news journalist. The triple whammy.
Could Howard's humiliation be any more complete?
Only if Kevin Rudd had dispatched removalist vans to Kirribilli House at 6am on Sunday morning.
McKew's win is a repudiation of everything Howard claimed his Australia was all about.
If Howard had even dared to raise immigration-related issues during the election campaign, in search of a new Tampa, as he desperately campaigned to hold onto immigrant-rich Bennelong, his defeat would only have been more massive.
The media consensus is that the disgusting Lindsay Leaflet Scandal cost Howard dearly in Bennelong, where the immigrant-strong local population got all-too-real and rare glimpse at the racist dark heart of the Liberal right wing conservatives Howard had proudly allowed to blossom under his decade long rule.
The international media headlines on Howard's total defeat have been brutal :
Howard's Final Humiliation - Out Of Parliament And Out Of Government
