The Labor Party’s Susan Templeman has claimed the seat of Macquarie from sitting Liberal MP Louise Markus.
Ms Templeman made an emotional election night speech in front of a room full of jubilant supporters at Springwood’s Royal Hotel on Saturday night.
“What we’ve shown is that people talking to people is the way to get our message across and the way to hear everybody else’s message,” she said.
“I don’t when this last happened but to have a Labor mayor [of the Blue Mountains], a Labor dominated [Blue Mountains] council, a Labor Member for Blue Mountains and a Labor Member for Macquarie. That shows the trust we’ve built over all these years and there’s so many people to thank for that,” she said.
The result looked promising for Labor early in the night when it won key booths in the usually Liberal-voting Hawkesbury part of the electorate.
While every major media outlet called the Macquarie result as a Labor gain, with pre-poll and postal votes still to be counted, Louise Markus did not concede on election night.
In an address to her party room at Windsor she thanked her staff and husband before stating confidently, "we're not done yet".
Mrs Markus predicted pre-poll votes would be crucial. She also slammed the ALP for running a dishonest campaign, citing Medicare as an example.
"In coming days there will need to be some scrutineers," she said. "I still believe without question that the Coalition is the best to lead this nation."
Australian Electoral Commission figures on Sunday morning had Ms Templeman on 52.37 per cent of the two party preferred vote to Louise Markus on 47.63 per cent, a swing to Labor of almost seven per cent.
Posting on her Facebook page on Sunday morning, Ms Templeman wrote: “Waking up and still overwhelmed that we've won Macquarie. Thanks for all the messages and posts - will take a while to respond to each. Thank you to everyone who was part of this win. And now the work begins to deliver for this amazing community.”
