THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

ENFIELD
Labor 15.9%

Known as Ross Smith until the 2002 election, Enfield covers northern suburbs south of Grand Junction Road from Mansfield Park east to Clearview, with a south-eastern spur jutting into more fashionable suburbs nearer the city (Millsworth and Collinsworth). Small Liberal majorities in the latter area are more than cancelled out by thumping Labor ones further north. The redistribution has added 1148 new voters in a Labor-friendly area of Prospect north of Regency Road, a change Labor objected to in its Boundaries Commission submission as they were concerned about losing Labor voters in marginal Adelaide.

Much fought over by Labor members in search of a dependable party stronghold, the seat has had a particularly interesting history in recent times. Ralph Clarke became the member in 1993 and rose to the deputy leadership when defeated Premier Lynn Arnold quit in 1994, but despite his seniority he was weakened by the terminal decline of his Centre Left faction. An alliance struck between the Right and the Bolkus Left after the 1997 election saw him dumped from the deputy leadership in favour of the Right's Annette Hurley, who despite factional deals only won the caucus ballot over Clarke by 15 votes to 14. A particularly brazen branch-stacking operation over the following year inspired him to take legal action against his own party, resulting in a series of landmark legal victories which established the right of courts to intervene in internal party matters.

A secret ballot of de-stacked local branches indicated 60 out of 74 members with voting rights supported Clarke, but the state executive intervened to install John Rau (right), a former colleague of Clarke's in the Centre Left faction who had made the switch to the Right. A few months before the 2002 election, The Advertiser reported claims from Clarke and a Centre Left colleague, Senator Chris Schacht (himself recently demoted to the lethal third place on the Senate ticket), that Mike Rann had moved to have Rau dumped and Clarke reinstated as the Labor candidate. Clarke attempted to hold the seat as an independent, but went into the election burdened by domestic violence allegations (for which charges were terminated by the DPP in 1999 due to "credibility problems" with the evidence) from former partner Edith Pringle, who ran as an upper house candidate under the banner "You Can't Beat a Woman". Clarke narrowly failed to pip the Liberal candidate into third place, trailing 26.5 per cent to 28.6 per cent at the crucial point in the count. He would almost certainly have won had the gap been closed, as Rau fell well short of a primary vote majority with 39.6 per cent.

Rau came to parliament from a background as a barrister and adviser to three Hawke Government ministers (Mick Young, Michael Tate and Neal Blewett). He had earlier failed to win the federal seat of Hindmarsh in 1993, which was Labor's first defeat since 1917 – though in fairness to Rau, the seat had been made very marginal by an unfavourable redistribution. He hit the ground running upon entering parliament, building a high profile through crusades over parliamentary reform, workplace training, motor scooters, unruly public housing tenants and dubious practices in the real estate industry. Liberal candidate Samuel Joyce (left) is an 18 year old law student which, with all due respect to him, seems mildly insulting to the electorate.

Dennis Bertoldo of the Standard Messenger (an old Perth work colleague of the Poll Bludger's, unless I'm much mistaken) reports that John Rau has extracted a grovelling retraction and apology from Samuel Joyce, who had issued a press release that criticised Rau over a delivery of contaminated soil to a Housing Trust development site. Joyce craftily stated that he was "indebted to Mr Rau's lawyers for mentioning the sum of $65,000 in damages plus costs" and noted the burden this would add to his "still accumulating HECS debt", which to the Poll Bludger's mind makes Rau look like of a bit of a bully. Rau denied threatening to sue Joyce for this sum, saying he had merely called his attention to the precedent of Mitchell MP Kris Hanna's successful action against outgoing Bright MP Wayne Matthew.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain

With Ralph Clarke's 23.1 per cent from 2002 up for grabs, John Rau added 24.0 per cent to the Labor primary vote and the Liberal vote was down less than elsewhere (from 24.1 per cent to 21.2 per cent). The formerly Liberal-voting area of Collinswood and Broadview in the electorate's outer south-east swung to Labor by about 15 per cent, providing one of the earliest indications on election night of the scale of the disaster facing the Liberals. Overall, the two-party swing was 8.5 per cent, slightly below the Adelaide average.

OUTCOME: Labor retain (24.5%)