|
THE POLL BLUDGER MOORE
Moore extended to Northam and Toodyay 100 kilometres east of Perth when it was created in 1949, but its increasingly urban orientation was demonstrated in 1974 when “new right” warrior John Hyde won the seat from the National Alliance, a WA-only hybrid of the DLP and the Country Party that lost both of the Country Party's WA seats. It first assumed its current identity as a northern suburbs seat with the 1980 redistribution, and temporarily lost it again with its extension north to Jurien in 1984. Labor won the seat for the first time with Bob Hawke's sweep of the "mortgage belt" in 1983, but the party's grip was loosened in 1990 when it assumed its approximate current location from North Beach north to the city limits. Liberal candidate Paul Filing added 6.3 per cent to a notional Liberal margin of 0.6 per cent, and picked up a further 1.8 swing in 1993. He lost his endorsement ahead of the 1996 election, which was widely seen as the result of machinations of controversial party power-broker Noel Crichton-Browne – wrongly, in the view of Joe Poprzeczny of WA Business News. Filing then proceeded to hold the seat as an independent over Liberal candidate Paul Stevenage, who apparently received little campaign support from John Howard or the national party headquarters (a similar story unfolded at the same election in Curtin). After flirting with One Nation, Filing was defeated at the 1998 election by Liberal candidate Mal Washer, a general practitioner. | |