Jolly Hockey's dip into the Styx

The are-we-there-yet election campaign drones on, like a suffocating summer's day, while we all await a cool change to relieve us of this tedium. A gentle zephyr blew in from the North this morning, with ALP polling showing 'Jolly' Joe Hockey's vote heading south, accompanied by the rider that this happened in 2004 only for him to be rescued by Latham's ill-conceived 'private schools hit-list'.

One thing that hasn't been recalled is that in 2004, the big story was the meteoric rise in the Greens primary vote, I recall one poll saying their candidate, Dr Ted Nixon, was on track to get around 25% of the vote and cause major preference chaos. This was one of many seats where polls indicated massive discontent in the bizarrely named 'doctor's wives' demographic (I prefer the term 'true liberal'). They threatened a Green tide that would sweep through Bennelong, Wentworth and North Sydney and similar seats in Melbourne and Brisbane. Then the Greens drug policy was hammered into the collective Liberal conscience and most of the voters stayed with their hip pockets.

However, the sleeping giant of social change dwells here. North Sydney has the highest rate of tertiary educated voters in the country (41%). The disquiet about Liberal policy, so much so that nearly a quarter of the electorate considered voting Green, indicates that these voters are not happy about the direction the Liberal party under John Howard is taking, and if they're not concerned about the economy or their kids' education, a major swing is on the cards. Note, however, that the concern with their children's educational welfare might well segue into a future concern with climate change.

This time around, the equation is completely different to 2004, which is why Sunrise Joe is in about as much trouble in his Federation citadel as Mr Howard is in Bennelong. Like sweltering summer days in Sydney, there are all the ingredients for a perfect storm:

1. Kevin Rudd's popularity and the commensurate surge in the national ALP vote
2. Joe Hockey is Minister for Work Choices, one of the three issues cited as most influential in North Sydney
3. Health is a major issue owing to the debacle at North Shore Hospital, hence Tony Abbott's desperate attempts to pin the blame on the Iemma government
4. The surge in climate change into the political forefront

Add these issues to the fact that the ALP has placed North Sydney on its campaign radar and inserted former ABC weatherman, Mike Bailey to contest the seat, and you have a traditional 'blue-ribbon' seat becoming a line-ball contest.

On the value of the moniker 'held since Federation', it is worth remembering that in the US, the entire political division of the country reversed over social policy in the latter half of the 20th century. The predominantly poor South, formerly the Democrat heartland, became the Republican heartland as a collection of old-fashioned segregationists and new-fangled evangelists exploited LBJ's civil rights reforms. Accordingly, old Republican strongholds became Democratic, such as New York.

We have already had a taste of the former ALP western suburban and regional areas shifting, largely on economic lines but buttressed by xenophobic and cultural concerns. Is it time for the true liberals to turn?