The seats that counted in Week 2

Well before anyone was talking about a July 2 election, Russell Matheson was planning an exit strategy from Macarthur.

It came to nothing when Malcolm Turnbull prevented the Liberal MP from abandoning his southwestern Sydney electorate for the safer seat of Hume next door.

The prime minister though is doing his level best to save Mathieson, twice visiting Macarthur during the second week of the July 2 election campaign.

Thanks to a redistribution of NSW electoral boundaries the seat risks being lost to Labor for the first time since 1993.

Matheson was quick to see the writing on the wall as soon as the electoral commission released its new maps. His seven per cent margin from the 2013 election has been whittled down to 3.3 per cent and within Labor's range.

Hume, on the other hand, is ultra-safe Liberal territory quarantined by the PM for rising star Angus Taylor.

Both Turnbull and Labor leader Bill Shorten made identical pledges to spend $50 million on a commuter road between burgeoning residential developments and Macarthur's main centre of Campbelltown.

Macarthur is a seat the government is sandbagging as it seeks to preserve its comfortable majority in parliament.

Shorten began the second week of the campaign standing on Kingscliff Beach in northern NSW to make a $41 million pledge about swimming lessons for young Australians.

But his presence in the Labor seat of Richmond, rather than the neighbouring marginal Nationals seat of Page, signalled a potential obstacle for the opposition.

Like Macarthur is for the coalition, Richmond is problematic for Labor and especially in the wake of unhelpful boundary changes.

MP Justine Elliott's hold on the seat has dropped from more than five per cent to just 1.6 per cent as she prepares to face a two-pronged challenge from the Nationals and the Greens.

Once a prime agricultural electorate, Richmond is home to an increasing number of seachangers, tree-huggers and environmentally-aware baby boomers.

Famous among its alternate communities is Nimbin.

It's also where the Greens are hoping to increase their share of the primary vote from the 18 per cent they garnered in 2013.

The minor party believes Richmond will fall into their hands at some stage in the next five to 10 years, and making it a less secure seat for Labor is all part of their long-range plan for more lower house seats.

Batman, though, is an immediate target for the Greens and thanks to sitting Labor MP David Feeney and Liberal mischief-making that's now a real possibility.

Feeney had his leader on the backfoot and his colleagues guffawing after admitting he failed to declare a $2.3 million negatively-geared property on a parliamentary register.

The Greens gleefully jumped on the omission.

On paper, Batman should be a safe inner-Melbourne Labor seat with a margin of 20 per cent - but only if the Liberals preference the ALP ahead of the Greens.

Reversing preferences makes the result lineball.