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THE POLL BLUDGER WILLS
Wills was created in 1949 around the northern Melbourne suburb of Coburg, which has remained in the electorate ever since. The only interruption to Labor control in its early years came with the Labor split, which resulted in member William Bryson contesting the 1955 election under the ALP (Anti-Communist) banner. His successor Gordon Bryant served as Aboriginal Affairs Minister in the Whitlam government, bequeathing the seat to Bob Hawke on his retirement in 1980. Hawke's resignation following his loss of the party leadership to Paul Keating in December 1991 provided an early electoral test for the new Keating government, which it failed disastrously: in a record field of 22 candidates, local Aussie Rules identity Phil Cleary outpolled the Labor candidate 33.5 per cent to 29.4 per cent, enjoying a landslide 15.7 per cent win after preferences. This result was declared void the following November when the High Court ruled he was disqualified from running, on the grounds that his job as a teacher at the time he nominated constituted “an office of profit under the Crown”. The imminence of the 1993 election meant no new by-election was held, but Cleary was able to narrowly recover the seat at the general election by a margin of 2.4 per cent. Cleary's position was weakened by the redistribution ahead of the 1996 election, and the seat returned to the Labor fold with an easy win for their candidate Kelvin Thomson. | |