Location: Sydney Western suburbs around Liverpool and Cabramatta
Held by: Chris Hayes (Labor) – retiring
Incoming candidate: Kristina Keneally (Labor)
Main opponent: The commute from the Northern Beaches to Cabramatta
Margin: 14% (very safe)
Profile: As NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally oversaw the biggest loss by a sitting state government in NSW history. Eager to learn new and interesting ways to lose elections, she was immediately snapped up by federal Labor.
Keneally became a Senator in 2018 after losing a by-election in the North Shore seat of Bennelong in 2017. When the lower house seat of Fowler, the centre of Sydney’s Vietnamese community, became vacant, Labor showed its commitment to diversity by preselecting Keneally – the party’s first middle-class white woman with an American accent.
Some within the party were angered that more favoured Vietnamese-Australian candidate Tu Le was overlooked. But, as a resident of the Northern Beaches, Keneally says she understands the concerns of the Vietnamese communities of Cabramatta, having once parked her Range Rover next to a banh mi shop in Mosman.
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