"I was given no reason, I was escorted to my car and they made sure I turned right towards my [Cabramatta] office and didn't turn to come back to Westfield shopping centre." Opposition Leader Tony Abbott walks the streets of Liverpool, NSW with Kent Johns (left) , Liberal candidate for Werriwa. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "We were treated like second-class citizens. Me, [Jaymes Diaz in] Greenway and [Martin Zaiter in] Paramatta. "The Liberal Party won't win western Sydney for the next 10 years because of the way they treated the ethnic candidates and the ethnic voters." Pictures from Mr Abbott's street walk in Liverpool - parts of which are in the electorate of Fowler - on August 19 show him with Werriwa candidate Kent Johns, whose electorate borders Fowler and Liberal MP Craig Kelly from nearby Hughes.

Mr Nguyen, 74, is seething at his treatment, having mortgaged his Bankstown home to plough an estimated $300,000 into his campaign. Justin De Domenico. Mr Nguyen, who arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1979, said he spent a further $90,000 out of his own pocket on the campaign, maxing out three credit cards to pay for campaign literature translated into Vietnamese, Arabic and Indian. He said Tony Abbott had spent a lot of time with Fiona Scott in Lindsay and thought he would expect to see him when he visited Liverpool, inside the Fowler electorate. He said he was gagged from speaking to the media, including the local Vietnamese channel of SBS radio and Vietnamese press, or from taking part in any public debates.

This meant he could not respond to what he calls a smear campaign by the Labor campaign team of Chris Hayes, who eventually won the seat with a thumping 9.4 per cent swing to him. The swing went against the statewide trend of 3 per cent toward the Liberal Party. The dirt sheet, "the facts about Andrew Nguyen", claimed Mr Nguyen is a property developer and a migration agent and quoted a letter from state Liberal Charlie Lynn, a political enemy, that Mr Nguyen "isn't fit for public office". Mr Nguyen said: "How can I respond to a smear campaign if I can't talk to the media? We were told we would be disendorsed if we spoke to journalists. We were given an instruction not to answer the phone if we didn't recognise the number." Mr Nguyen told Fairfax the man who escorted him was called "Justin". "I would say Justin removed me. I looked like a criminal and he was a policeman removing me from there."

A local Liberal Party member active in the campaign confirmed to Fairfax it was Justin De Domenico, who had been assigned by Liberal head office to supervise in Fowler. "I saw Justin take him away. It was all part of keeping candidates away from the media who they thought might embarrass them like Diaz," the source said. Mr De Domenico did not answer his phone. Liberal Party director Mark Neeham said there was no order to avoid media. "Each request was considered on its merits," he said. "Head office and the local party gave Andrew a huge amount of support in the lead up to the campaign. I have not heard about Andrew Nguyen being kept away [from the Liverpool event] but I'm surprised he didn't raise it with me during the campaign if that was the case, "Mr Neeham said.

A local Liberal backer of Nguyen's told Fairfax he was "gobsmacked" by the result in Fowler. "Look at the results by individual booths, he was being beaten in Vietnamese areas like Lansvale, Cabramatta and Mount Pritchard," the source said. In the Cabramatta booth, Mr Hayes received 1561 first preference votes to Mr Nguyen's 302. A Liberal source said: "He was a dud candidate, simple as that."