Published: 28 February 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
STEVE MEACHAM asks the four aspirants in the leafy upper north shore seat to nominate their top policy priorities.
South African-born businesswoman Karyn Edelstein distinctly remembers the night that put her on the path to becoming Labor’s candidate for the “leafy” North Shore electorate of Davidson in the forthcoming NSW state election.
It was Saturday May 18, 2019. Edelstein and her husband had been out with friends and were listening to the car radio as the unthinkable happened. Scott Morrison had won what he called the “miracle” election.
“I was shocked and surprised,” she recalls. “The pundits and the pollsters had consistently put the Coalition behind [Bill Shorten’s] Labor.
“I’d voted for Labor ever since we’d arrived from South Africa, but I’d never been a member of a political party. I resolved that night to transition from being a passive supporter and enrol as a member of my local Labor party.”
Davidson - which stretches from Lindfield in the south to North Turramurra and includes St Ives, Gordon, Killara, Belrose and Davidson itself - has 60,040 registered voters, and is widely regarded as a safe Liberal seat. In 2019 the Liberal candidate Jonathan O’Shea retained the seat with 75% of the two-party preferred vote.
As part of the larger Bradfield Federal electorate, Davidson also has the largest number of Jewish voters north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. “It has the second biggest concentration of Jews outside Waverley,” Edelstein claims. She is one of them.
Since the electorate was created in 1971, all four men (and naturally they’ve all been male) elected have been Liberals: Dick Healey (1971-81), the controversial Dr Terry Metherell (1981-92) who helped bring down Nick Greiner’s Liberal government, Andrew Humpherson (1992-2007) and the retiring former Speaker Jonathan O’Shea. (2007 until now).
In 2023 there are four candidates registered for Davidson.
