Speaking on local radio on Monday morning, Scott Morrison said he was coming to the seat of Gilmore to announce $128 million for the Shellharbour Hospital redevelopment. Only problem with that is, Shellharbour Hospital is actually in the seat of Whitlam. In truth though, the Shellharbour Hospital announcement was a well-positioned pitch to the voters in the electorate of Gilmore which shares its northern borders with Shellharbour.
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The increased investment in a health facility in the rapidly growing region of the southern Illawarra can't be seen as a bad thing. It's one of those election promises which an opposition would be hard pressed to argue against. Certainly the pledge by the Morrison Government - as revealed by the Illawarra Mercury on Monday morning - was roundly welcomed by staff and patients alike at Shellharbour. It's a healthy injection to the south of our region getting a health facility it deserves. In terms of the Federal election, it is probably as close as we'll see Mr Morrison to Wollongong.
The seat of Whitlam, where Mr Morrison was on Tuesday afternoon, is held by Labor's Stephen Jones who has a healthy double digit buffer on the seat. Such is the Labor stronghold, the Liberals haven't even managed to find a candidate. The story in the seat of Cunningham featuring Wollongong and the north is not much different. Labor's sitting member Sharon Bird is unbackable $1.01 to retain her seat and Liberal candidate Chris Atlee has been largely unsighted, suggesting this is a profile-building exercise for a tilt at the next local council election.
Mr Morrison is not silly. He knows this will be an election decided on the margins and Gilmore is one of those margins. The battle between Labor's Fiona Phillips and the Liberal's "Prime Minister's pick" Warren Mundine will be critical. "Here in the seat of Gilmore, they will not only decide who their next member for Gilmore will be," Mr Morrison told the media circus in Nowra on Monday. "It's also one of those key seats around the country, where the people of Gilmore, the people on the south coast, will get to decide who the next prime minister should be."
That is why Gilmore matters.