By Lenore Taylor
Labor's 2007 star candidate Maxine McKew has met Kevin Rudd to pass on her own, and her electorate's, deep disappointment at the shelving of the carbon pollution reduction scheme as she fights for re-election in 2010.
Ms McKew told the Herald she'd had a meeting with the Prime Minister in the past few weeks ''to let him know what the people in the electorate were feeling, that they do want action on climate change and that I continue to be an advocate for that … it is an important bedrock issue for the electorate.''
The decision to shelve the scheme he had touted as the best solution to the ''greatest moral and economic challenge of our time'' appears to have had a dramatic impact on voter perceptions of Mr Rudd and immediately preceded a dramatic slump in his poll standing and that of the Labor Party.
The former ABC broadcaster, who beat the then prime minister, John Howard, by just 2400 votes in 2007 and holds Bennelong by a margin of just 1.5 per cent, said many constituents had raised it with her and that she herself had been both surprised and disappointed by it.
She had talked with constituents about the deferral, ''and they are disappointed, I am disappointed, and I still believe it is absolutely inevitable we will see a price on carbon''.
The Prime Minister had made it clear the deferral was ''an unbelievably difficult decision for him … he's said that to all of us'', but that the ''political consensus was not there for a very, very difficult change to the system''.
Ms McKew's Liberal opponent is the tennis champion John Alexander, who originally stood for preselection in the much safer Sydney seat of Bradfield. The ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, says Bennelong is now a bellwether seat.
If she does win again, Ms McKew, who has been a parliamentary secretary - first in the childcare portfolio and now in regional development - says she would like the chance to be a minister. ''That would be good, yeah, I do,'' she said. ''There are a lot of people ahead of me and a lot behind me. I think I have done a good job.''