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WITH just over a week to go before Australia's general election, the fight for the country's smallest and wealthiest electorate has descended into an entertaining mix of personal intrigue, sexual innuendo and raunchy stunts.
The knife-edge marginal seat of Wentworth in Sydney includes the silky sands of Bondi Beach, multimillion-dollar harbourside mansions, a grubby red-light district and the epicentre of Australia's gay scene.
It is held by the richest man in Parliament, former investment banker, barrister and aspiring prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Turnbull is being challenged by a former human rights lawyer, George Newhouse.
Both are up against Newhouse's glamorous blond ex-girlfriend, Dani Ecuyer, in what one Australian newspaper described yesterday as "the world's wackiest electorate".
Ecuyer, 43, a single mother of one who spent more than a decade in London as an investment banker, has been accused of standing as an independent candidate only to spite her former lover.
She roundly dismisses the allegation, insisting she is campaigning on environmental issues because she is appalled at Prime Minister John Howard's inaction on climate change.
Australia and the United States are the only developed countries to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which has emerged as a key election issue.
"There are attempts to portray me as a bimbo and a spiteful, scorned ex-lover," Ecuyer told the Herald yesterday. "It's not acceptable behaviour in my book. George and I split up in September, but I was being asked by supporters back in February to stand as a candidate."
Ecuyer has been criticised for organising a media photo opportunity last week in which she was carried on a surfboard on to Bondi Beach by a pair of shirtless hunks. The muscle-bound models were intended to appeal to gay voters but the stunt failed to impress environmental campaigners.
A member of the Climate Change Coalition said it was ill-conceived. "[Climate change] isn't a fad, it isn't a game. It's something we are taking seriously," campaigner Dixie Coultan said.
As an independent, Ecuyer has no chance of winning the seat, but her votes may just decide whether it goes to Turnbull or her ex-boyfriend.
The hothouse atmosphere of the three-way contest intensified with accusations that a high-profile journalist used a mixture of flirtatiousness and threats to intimidate Newhouse, who is running for the opposition Labor Party.
In a series of emails, Caroline Overington, from the Australian newspaper, said she was recently separated from her husband and might "make a pass" at Newhouse, describing him as "short, dark and Jewish".
She then allegedly tried to pressure him into having his picture taken. "Either you say yes to a photograph, smiling and happy and out campaigning, or we stake you out and get you looking like a cat caught in a trap, in your PJs [pyjamas]. Your choice," Overington wrote.
Both the journalist and her editor claimed the emails were sent in jest, but they have added to the impression that the race for Wentworth has become more Home and Away than Hansard in tone.
There was further intrigue this week when it emerged that Newhouse may not be eligible to stand as a candidate because he resigned too late from a government job.
He dismissed the issue as a minor procedural glitch, accusing his opponent Turnbull of "looking for dirt on me". But the confusion over his eligibility was a boost for Turnbull, who is estimated to have spent A$1 million ($1.17 million) trying to retain what was once regarded as a safe Liberal seat.
He faces a tough fight to retain it because many of his well-heeled constituents are furious that as Environment Minister he gave approval last month to a controversial wood pulp mill in Tasmania.
The site of the A$1 billion mill may be more than 2000km away but there is concern it will devour huge quantities of old-growth eucalyptus forest and pollute the air and water on Tasmania's north coast.
A swing of just 2.5 per cent would hand the seat to Labor, which polls have suggested is heading for a landslide victory.
"It's a tight election and we're working very hard," Turnbull said from his constituency office a couple of kilometres up the hill from Bondi Beach. He accused the Labor Party of replicating the Government's policies on tax, the economy, health and education. "The me-tooism is breathtaking."
Turnbull, who came to prominence in 1986 after defeating the Government in court over the Spycatcher affair, led the Australian Republican Movement during the 1999 referendum on whether to ditch the Queen as head of the state.
The former Rhodes scholar remains a staunch republican but denied that had led to a conflict of interest with the Prime Minister, an avowed monarchist.
"It's something we agree to disagree on. Actually I've always got on rather well with monarchists. In my view the issue will come back on the agenda at the end of the Queen's reign."
