The Liberal member for Miranda, Graham Annesley, resigned from the New South Wales Parliament and as
Minister for Sport and Recreation on 28 August 2013 to take up the post of chief executive officer of the
Gold Coast Titans rugby league team. Annesley in his resignation to Parliament said he never regarded himself as a politician and that there were many aspects of politics he did not care for and he has always felt more at home as a sports administrator. A central
Sutherland Shire electorate, Miranda crosses the peninsula between the
Georges River and
Port Hacking. It includes the suburbs of
Como,
Bonnet Bay,
Oyster Bay,
Kareela,
Kirrawee,
Gymea,
Gymea Bay,
Grays Point and parts of
Sylvania,
Miranda and
Jannali. The seat's federal equivalent is in the western half of the
Division of Cook. Created in
1971, Miranda had traditionally been a Liberal electorate. It had only been won by Labor in landslide elections, two under
Neville Wran in
1978 and
1981, and again under
Bob Carr in
1999 and in
2003. According to
ABC psephologist Antony Green, the seat should have been recovered by the Liberals in
2007 but was narrowly retained by Labor. Going into the
2011 election, Miranda was Labor's most marginal seat, with a 0.8 percent two-party margin. In the 2011 election, the Liberals won government in a landslide. In the process, they picked up a large enough swing in Miranda to turn it into a very safe Liberal seat on paper in one stroke, with a 21.0 percent two-party margin. There were 39 seats held by the
Coalition on smaller margins. ==Campaign==