MAXINE McKew was sporting a smile a mile wide yesterday after an opinion poll showed she has every chance of toppling John Howard in his seat of Bennelong.

But the former ABC journalist was putting on a good display of modesty in the Prime Minister’s northwestern Sydney electorate.

“It will require a miracle of gigantic proportions for Labor to take this seat,” McKew said.

“The Prime Minister has held this seat since 1974, he is exceptionally well-known, he brings the whole stature of office, the highest office in the land, to this seat. So, I have a very hard job ahead of me.”

It’s a job McKew clearly relishes. Having sold, in a blaze of publicity, her $1.34million home in Mosman on the north shore, she will move into her new home in Eastwood in 10 days.

“John Howard’s profile is undoubtedly higher than mine. I’ve got a job ahead of me. I’ll be out and about, and I’ll be doing all sorts of campaigning.”

Labor’s faith in their star candidate has been rewarded with a Galaxy poll showing that if an election were held now — on a two- party-preferred basis — Labor would take the seat with 52per cent of the vote.

Support for McKew is at 46per cent, up 18 per cent on Labor’s vote at the last election and well above the swing needed to topple Howard.

If history goes the way Labor wants it to, Howard will be the first sitting prime minister since Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 to lose his own seat.

McKew said the electorate had been enormously kind to her already. No one was asking who she thought she was for taking on the Prime Minister.

“They have open minds and warm hearts,” she said. “The poll is an early snapshot but it does reflect some of the things I’m hearing … that there is a mood for change.

“Any number of people have come up to me and said that `we are Liberal voters but this time we are thinking of voting Labor’. There is a real respect that theLabor Party is taking this seat seriously for the first time. More and more people are feeling disappointed, let down, by Mr Howard and they are looking for something different.”

Speaking at Morrison Bay Park, at Putney, with kids playing soccer and mums and dads everywhere, McKew was a long way from Mosman and her old life in themedia.

But while talking almost lovingly of the “the wonderful community” she has adopted, she displayed a good grasp of the seat’s changing demographics.

“Bennelong requires just a swing of over 4per cent to fall into Labor hands,” she said. “I’m convinced that eventually, in a metro seat, it will be a Labor seat. Thedemographics are moving Labor’s way.”

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