THE POLL BLUDGER
Queensland Legislative Assembly Election 2006

CURRUMBIN
Liberal 3.2%

Currumbin covers the last 5 kilometres of the Gold Coast before the New South Wales border, from Palm Beach south to Coolangatta, and extends about 20 kilometres inland down the Currumbin Valley. The electorate came into existence at the 1986 election when it was won for the Nationals by Leo Gately, who went on to lose to Liberal candidate Trevor Coomber in 1989. Coomber abandoned Currumbin at the 1992 election to challenge future Premier Rob Borbidge in Surfers Paradise, for what Antony Green describes as "some strange reason". Not only did Coomber fail to defeat Borbidge, but Currumbin bucked the trend of an otherwise static election result by swinging heavily to Labor, whose candidate Merri Rose won by a two-party margin of 5.8 per cent. Rose survived the 1995 backlash against the Goss government and looked to be sitting pretty when the 2001 landslide left her with a margin of 14.5 per cent. Unfortunately, her career went sharply downhill immediately thereafter. The government was embarrassed in October 2003 by the revelation that Rose had been allowing her electorate car to be used by her son, who at one point used it to drive his friends to Sydney. The issue was protracted by outrage over the government's ploy of submitting electorate car records to cabinet in order to exempt them from freedom of information requests. Rose was also at the centre of ongoing allegations of bullying against staff members and drivers. These came to a head early in the 2004 election campaign when she was compelled to resign as Racing, Gaming and Fair Trading Minister after the state workers' compensation body upheld a staffer's complaint. Her primary vote subsequently fell from 56.4 to 39.6 per cent, which translated into a decisive 17.7 per cent swing to the Liberals.

Jann Stuckey (right) operated a communications consultancy before entering parliament, and is described by former state party vice-president Graham Young as "definitely non-aligned" in the bipolar Queensland Liberal factional divide. She won a significant promotion when the Coalition agreement was finalised in September 2005, taking on the shadow tourism, fair trading and wine industry development portfolios. Labor candidate Michael Riordan (left) is the son of Whitlam government Construction and Housing Minister Joe Riordan and the brother of recently elected NSW state party president Bernard Riordan. Riordan currently works as a high school English teacher and has a PhD in literature and a background as a playwright and ABC Television scriptwriter. His credits in the latter role include the mildly amusing late 1980s sitcom Dearest Enemy starring John Wood, which dealt with the adventures of a Labor husband and his Liberal wife. Peter Cameron of the Gold Coast Bulletin reports that Riordan is "close to the right-wing Australian Workers Union", and thus linked to the Labor Forum faction.

Suzanne Lappeman of the Gold Coast Bulletin wrote in the second week of the campaign that while Labor had "all but written off" Dianne Reilly in Mudgeeraba, the party was increasingly hopeful its 2004 defeat in Currumbin would prove to have been an aberration born of the Tugun Bypass and the troubles of Merri Rose. Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail also referred to "wild talk" about Labor winning Currumbin, and concurred that Labor sources described Mudgeeraba as "next to hopeless". A Gold Coast Bulletin poll of around 375 voters in the second week of the campaign had the Liberals 3 per cent ahead on the primary vote.

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain