1976, when he was narrowly defeated by Labor’s Mick Clough. This result was a decisive factor in the election of the Wran government as Coates was widely considered sympathetic to the Liberals, who had not fielded a candidate against him.

Bob Debus became member in 1981 after Clough moved to Bathurst, and would eventually serve as Attorney-General in the Carr/Iemma government. Debus’s political career had a seven-year interruption after his defeat by Liberal candidate Barry Morris at the 1988 election. Morris was re-elected in 1991, but disendorsed in 1995 following a police investigation into bomb and death threats against a Blue Mountains councillor. He ran again as an independent but was unable to prevent Debus from recovering his old seat, securing a margin of 2.5 per cent. In 2007Debus relinquished the seat to run successfully at the federal election later that year in the seat of Macquarie, which he held for one term before retiring.

Debus was succeeded by Rural Fire Services commissioner Phil Koperberg, whose drafting defused a complicated factional battle between Naomi Parry, an academic and part-time school teacher, and Adam Searle, a barrister and Blue Mountains councillor. No sooner had Koperberg secured the Blue Mountains preselection than he was forced to go public about an apprehended violence order taken out against him by his ex-wife Kate in 1987. Koperberg accused Blacktown MP Paul Gibson, who had recently concluded a 10-year relationship with Kate Koperberg, of running a “smear campaign” against him, which the described as “bordering on evil”. Gibson denied any involvement, and multiple