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THE POLL BLUDGER O'CONNOR
Created at the 1980 election from territory previously covered by Moore and Canning, O'Connor separates the vast electorate of Kalgoorlie from the electorates covering Western Australia's populous south-west. It extends from Geraldton and Jurien on the coast north of Perth to Albany and Hopetoun on the state's southern coast, through towns including Dalwallinu, Lake Grace, Wagin, Katanning and Kojonup. The one seat in Western Australia where the Nationals might be competitive, they have been frozen out since the electorate's creation by the popularity of Liberal member Wilson Tuckey, whose win in 1980 was assisted by a schism in the state branch of the party. Labor's candidate is 20-year-old union organiser Dominic Rose, who was in the news in early October over an article he wrote for a university newspaper earlier in the year. Rose had expressed concern that Kevin Rudd came over as a “filthy Liberal” who seemed insufficiently enthusiastic about “killing capitalist pig dogs and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat”, although he appeared to be guilty of nothing more than indulging in undergraduate humour. | |