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THE POLL BLUDGER KALGOORLIE
Reputedly the world's largest electorate, Kalgoorlie covers the greater majority of the vast and empty Western Australian land mass. It encompasses Labor-voting mining towns, the Liberal-voting south coast town of Esperance, conservative pastoral areas, Aboriginal communities that return near-absolute votes for Labor, and the increasingly Liberal town of Kalgoorlie itself. It has been in Labor hands for most of its history, staying with the party for all but one election from 1922 to 1975. Graeme Campbell recovered the seat for Labor in 1980 and then proceeded to loosen the party's grip from within, emerging as a loose cannon with views that presaged those of Pauline Hanson. This led to his expulsion from the party prior to the 1996 election, but he retained the seat as an independent ahead of Labor candidate Ian Taylor, a former member for the state seat of Kalgoorlie who had an unproductive spell as Opposition Leader when Carmen Lawrence entered federal politics in 1994. Rather than throw his lot in with One Nation, Campbell stood with his own Australia First party at the 1998 election, but was defeated by Liberal candidate Barry Haase after Labor pipped him into third place. Haase consolidated his hold on the seat at the 2001 and 2004 elections, being assisted on the latter occasion by the death of Labor candidate Kevin Richards less than a month before polling day. A deal was brokered in which local MP Tom Stephens abandoned his place in the state upper house to contest the seat, on the understanding that he would be preselected for the lower house seat of Central Kimberley-Pilbara at the imminent state election if unsuccessful. So it proved, and Stephens is now back in state parliament as a member of lower house (though he has not recovered his place in the ministry). | |