THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

CROYDON
Labor 19.1%

Known as Spence prior to the 2002 election, Croydon is located to the immediate north-west of the city, from Findon to Bowden with Croydon in between. Labor member Michael Atkinson (right) is a Right faction powerbroker and an acknowledged figure of the state party's religious tendency, whose father was once the state head of the Democratic Labor Party. Atkinson entered parliament in 1989 and rose to the role of Shadow Attorney-General by the 1997 election, a portfolio he has maintained ever since. He was also put forward by the Right at this time as a candidate for the deputy leadership, but objections from the Left led to a compromise deal giving the job to Annette Hurley.

In government, Atkinson has been embroiled in the "Ashbourne affair", so named in honour of its main principal, Mike Rann's former hot-shot media adviser Randall Ashbourne. This involved an alleged offer from Ashbourne to former Labor deputy leader Ralph Clarke for settlement of defamation actions between Clarke and Atkinson, in exchange for which Clarke would be given lucrative statutory board positions (Clarke and Atkinson had once been close allies, but this came to a dramatic end when Clarke launched historic legal action against the party over a branch-stacking operation). Ashbourne was charged over the alleged offer but the DPP concluded there was insufficient evidence against Atkinson, who stood down between June and August in 2003 while the matter was referred to police. Ashbourne was ultimately acquitted in June 2005 and launched an unfair dismissal action against the government, although the Liberals remain convinced he was covering for Rann and Atkinson. Clarke himself did not give evidence at Ashbourne's trial and declined to publicly comment until November 2005, when he told an upper house inquiry that Ashbourne suggested positions might be available "in the future, although no timeline was suggested", and that he understood him to be speaking as Atkinson's "emissary or conduit".

Atkinson has also been damaged by the resignation of Justice Department chief executive Kate Lennon in 2004 after she was implicated in an artful accounting manoeuvre designed to prevent Treasury from recovering an unspent $6 million at the end of the financial year. Atkinson insisted he had no knowledge of the arrangement, and that he had been "the target of a Yes Minister episode, and Kate Lennon has played the role of Lady Humphrey Appleby". Mike Rann expressed full confidence in Atkinson's denial of Lennon's post-dismissal claim to a parliamentary committee that he had been told "maybe six or eight times". The government's tough-on-crime stance has also led to repeated run-ins between Atkinson and Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras, most notably when Atkinson told parliament Pallaras had requested a pay increase to a level equal with a Supreme Court judge – quite inaccurately, in the view of the Adelaide Review.

Atkinson's ministerial biography describes him as a "keen participant in talkback radio". In April 2005 he conducted an angry exchange with an elderly caller who accosted him for his failure to hunt down a man who had angered him during a traffic incident. The caller later claimed Atkinson rang him the following morning to demand he call the station to make an on-air retraction and apology under pain of a defamation suit. In June 2005, Atkinson faced a call for his resignation as Attorney-General from bosses of the Right faction Australian Workers Union and National Union of Workers and the Left faction Maritime Union of Australia and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. Among many faults cited was an "obsession with talkback radio". As Alex Kennedy wrote in the Independent Weekly, "heavyweight right (Shop Assistants) union boss Don Farrell delivers the clout to protect Atkinson's back whatever the rumblings about his being accident-prone and a liability in the lead-up to an election".

The Liberal candidate is Briony Whitehouse (left), a 23-year-old staffer to federal Sturt MP Christopher Pyne.

Congestion at the South Road traffic lights has been a long-running local issue, and the government announced in spring 2005 that it would spend $122 million on a tunnel underneath the railway and $65 million on an underpass beneath Anzac Highway.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain

Despite Michael Atkinson's troubles, Croydon has retained its status as Labor's third safest seat after a 6.8 per cent lift on the primary vote and a 6.9 per cent two-party swing. The Greens also did well in a seat they did not contest in 2002, polling 9.6 per cent. This was one of only two contests which Family First chose to sit out, perhaps concluding that Atkinson had the religious vote sewn up.

OUTCOME: Labor retain (26.0%)