Liberal preselection for Wentworth but did not eventually contest after concluding that preselection hopeful Peter King had the numbers in the branches. In 2003, Turnbull announced that he would challenge King for the seat and successfully defeated him to become the Liberal candidate. During what was a bitter preselection campaign, King accused Turnbull of branch stacking, by having local members transferring their membership to a branch that would decide the pre-selection, what King referred to as "branch stripping". Following his preselection loss, King stood against Turnbull at the 2004 federal election as an independent candidate. As a result, the traditionally safe Liberal seat became an electoral wildcard, the contest becoming a three-person race between Turnbull, King and the Labor candidate David Patch. During the campaign, Turnbull spent over 600,000 on his campaign. While the Liberal primary vote eventually fell by 10.3% to a total 41.8%, King received only 18% of the primary vote with a 57%/43% Liberal/Labor preference split which meant Turnbull was elected, albeit on a reduced 55.5% two-party vote after a 2.4% swing. The result meant that Wentworth was classified as a marginal seat for the first time since the 1993 federal election. Cabinet Minister Announcing a cabinet reshuffle on 24 January 2006, Prime Minister John Howard promoted Turnbull from the backbench to the role of parliamentary secretary, giving him special responsibility for water at the height of the 2000s Australian drought. On 26 September 2006, Howard announced the creation of a new Office of Water Resources, sitting within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, to address the problem of drought in Australia; Turnbull was given responsibility for this office. In January 2007, Howard promoted Turnbull to the Cabinet as Minister for the Environment and Water. In this position, Turnbull approved a proposed 1.7 billion Bell Bay Pulp Mill in north Tasmania, near Launceston. Turnbull's approval of the Bell Bay Pulp Mill project of Gunns came on 4 October 2007 and followed a report by the government's chief scientist Jim Peacock on the project's potential environmental impact, which required the project to meet 48 "strict environmental" conditions. In February 2007, Turnbull was criticised for claiming a government allowance of 175 a night and paying it to his wife as rent while living in a townhouse owned by her in Canberra. During the 2007 federal election campaign, Turnbull announced that if re-elected the government would contribute 10