make any public comment in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami. It was revealed that he was suffering from pancreatitis, a condition which had dogged him through his time as leader, but after repeatedly failing to reappear in public and after nearly a month of questions as to his whereabouts, he announced his resignation from politics on 18 January, thus creating the need for a by-election in his seat of Werriwa. Preselection The local branches in and around Werriwa had been the scene of major branch-stacking battles throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, due largely to preselection battles over the state seat of Liverpool, and as such, Labor's Werriwa Federal Electorate Council, which would normally select the candidate, had been "put on ice" since 2003. As a result, the party's left and right factions agreed to hold a ballot among the state's 34-member administrative committee to select the candidate. Two main candidates were touted for the Labor nomination: Brenton Banfield, the then-mayor of Campbelltown, and Steven Chaytor, a City of Campbelltown councillor and aide to former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Paul Lynch, the state MP for Liverpool, and former federal minister Michael Lee were both briefly touted as potential candidates, but were soon ruled out. Banfield emerged as an early favourite in the preselection, having been a popular mayor with a high profile in the area, and having been reportedly asked to nominate by the party's head office. The campaign got increasingly nasty, with supporters of Banfield and Chaytor clashing, which reached a peak when supporters of Chaytor launched a public attack on Banfield for having defended sex offenders through his work as a solicitor, though Banfield had been professionally obligated to do so. This reportedly raised concerns among party insiders that Banfield could become a liability after doing polling on the issue, and began looking for a consensus candidate instead. This emerged in the form of Chris Hayes, an industrial mediator and former assistant secretary of the Australian Workers' Union with no prior political background. He nominated at the end of January, receiving strong support from the party's head office, and Banfield and Chaytor came under pressure to withdraw before the close of nominations on 1 February; Banfield doing so on 31 January, and Chaytor following the next day. Hayes was thus the sole nominee at the close of nominations, and was confirmed as the party's candidate on