The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections

STIRLING Liberal 2.0%
Northern Perth Suburbs, Western Australia Click here for Bass discussion forum
	SAM WARD Liberty and Democracy Party DENISE HYND What Women Want KEITH HALLAM Citizens Electoral Council PETER TINLEY Labor (bottom left) SYMIA HOPKINSON Family First MICHAEL KEENAN Liberal (top left) TAMARA DESIATOV Greens ALEX PATRICK One Nation WA RAY MORAN Christian Democratic Party


Booth results at the 2004 election, with size of numbers varying to reflect number of votes cast. Click on image to toggle between two-party vote and swing.

Stirling covers Perth's northern suburbs from Scarborough and North Beach on the coast, extending inland through light industrial Balcatta and Osborne Park to low-income Balga and Mirrabooka, and the more affluent Dianella nearer the city. The Mitchell Freeway bisects the electorate from north to south and serves as a dividing line between the affluent Liberal-voting coast and the inland areas from which Labor draws its support. The seat was created at the 1955 election to cater for post-war suburban expansion, and roughly assumed its current dimensions following a redistribution in 1969. Subsequent growth in Perth’s northern corridor has been accommodated by drawing in the once rural electorate of Moore, and through the creation of Cowan when parliament was enlarged in 1984.

In its original incarnation, when it extended inland all the way to Guildford, Stirling was a Labor-leaning marginal held for all but one term by Harry Webb from 1955 to 1972. The 1969 changes produced a 3.4 per cent shift that made the seat notionally Liberal, but Webb comfortably held the seat on the back of the 1969 pro-Whitlam swing, only to lose it when Western Australia substantially bucked the national trend in 1972 (another Labor casualty being Forrest). Ian Viner held the seat for the Liberals from 1972 until 1983, surviving by 12 votes in 1974 and going on to serve as Aboriginal Affairs Minister in the Fraser government. In line with Labor’s strong overall performance, Stirling changed hands when the Hawke government was elected in 1983, with Ron Edwards winning the seat from Ian Viner. Despite an unfavourable redistribution in 1984, Edwards held the seat by narrow margins at the next three elections, surviving by just 234 votes in 1990. He finally lost to high-profile broadcaster Eoin Cameron in 1993, when WA again bucked a national pro-Labor trend.

Throughout this period the coastal suburbs assumed an older and more Liberal-friendly profile, but this was counterbalanced by a series of redistributions beneficial to Labor, the most recent of which removed a strong Liberal northern coastal stretch including Waterman, Marmion and Sorrento. Labor was thus able to regain the seat in 1998, when Cameron was defeated by Jann McFarlane. Stirling changed hands for the third time in five elections in 2004, following another swing consistent with the statewide result. There were instructive variations in the swing within the electorate, including a clear “doctors' wives” effect on the coast and strong swings to the Liberals further inland. The Liberals’ success came despite the embarrassing withdrawal of their candidate Paul Afkos eight months earlier, when it emerged he had borrowed $300,000 from a man he knew to be a convicted drug trafficker. Afkos stood aside and was replaced by Michael Keenan, real estate salesman, state party deputy director and former adviser to Amanda Vanstone and Alexander Downer. Labor suffered a slightly less dramatic embarrassment during the campaign period, when McFarlane told a talk radio caller (who proved to be Liberal activist Michelle Poor, later to run as the party’s candidate for Balcatta at the 2005 state election) that the party’s tax policy might need adjusting.

Michael Keenan has kept a fairly low profile in his first term in parliament, perhaps because his shaky hold on his seat has prompted him to tend to local matters. He faces a formidable Labor opponent in former SAS officer Peter Tinley, who was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003 after serving as deputy commander of the Special Forces Task Group in Iraq. He earlier served in Afghanistan and as the operations officer when the SAS intervened during the Tampa crisis. Tinley made headlines last November when he described the Iraq war as a “strategic and moral blunder”; he was promptly approached to run by Kim Beazley, then entering his final week as Labor leader. This thwarted the ambitions of Jim Murie, an official with the Left faction Communications Electrical Plumbing Union, who withdrew his nomination shortly before the preselection vote in February.

Westpoll, conducted by Patterson Market Research for the West Australian newspaper, has published two electorate-level surveys of 400 voters which have both given heart to the Liberals. A poll on June 15 showed Michael Keenan leading 48 per cent to 42 per cent on the primary vote, and 53-47 on two-candidate preferred. The second poll on October 20 replicated the two-party result, although Labor was down five points on the primary vote and the Liberals up one. Early in the final week of the campaign Andrew Burrell reported that Liberal polling had them narrowly ahead, with other reports on Labor polling suggesting they were struggling in Stirling but confident about Hasluck.