THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

FROME
Liberal 11.5%

Frome was created when a redistribution before the 1993 election removed Port Pirie from Stuart, which it had previously dominated along with Port Augusta. Port Pirie is an industrial town whose principal attraction is Pasminco's lead and zinc smelter, and it provided Labor with a safe seat in the days when it formed an electorate in its own right (which ended when rural vote weighting was abolished in 1970). There has since been a decline in both Port Pirie's relative population and Labor's share of the vote. It is now included in Frome as part of a 50 kilometre stretch of the eastern Spencer Gulf coastline, from which the electorate stretches south-eastwards through the Clare Valley wine country to Tarlee, about 50 kilometres north of Adelaide. More than half the electorate's voters are in small country towns such as Gladstone, Crystal Brook and Clare, which have kept the seat in Liberal hands since Rob Kerin (right) became its inaugural member in 1993.

Kerin came to parliament from a background as a farmer and small businessman, and was promoted to the primary industries portfolio in 1995. Although his performance was by all accounts workmanlike, Kerin's elevation to the premiership in October 2001 can be put down to two strokes of fortune. The first was his elevation to the deputy leadership as part of a factional compromise after deputy leader Graham Ingerson was compelled to resign in 1998. The second was Olsen's resignation in October 2001 after an inquiry (which had been forced on the government by the independents) found he had misled an earlier inquiry into the Motorola affair. Kerin got the job because both major factions wanted a stop-gap in place while they smoothed the way for their favoured candidates, Iain Evans of the Right and Vickie Chapman of the moderates. Kerin won the leadership vote ahead of Dean Brown by 13 votes to nine.

To the surprise of most, Kerin's country boy unpretentiousness struck a chord with the public and he was unexpectedly successful in making the party competitive, such that it would have retained power at the 2002 election if not for the wild card of independent Hammond MP Peter Lewis. Kerin's positive impact was nowhere more keenly felt than in his own seat, where he picked up a 7.7 per cent swing against the trend to add fat to a margin that had been cut to 2.9 per cent in 1997. Kerin's honeymoon failed to extend beyond the defeat of his government and his position has steadily deteriorated in opposition. In late 2005, Newspoll had Mike Rann leading Kerin 60 per cent to 16 per cent on the question of preferred premier, compared with a lead for Kerin of 50 per cent to 30 per cent going into the 2002 election. Kerin remains in the leadership purely because his serious rivals have written off the coming election, although he did survive a farcical challenge from Waite MP Martin Hamilton-Smith in October 2005 which collapsed when he failed to muster the eight votes needed for a spill.

Kerin's Labor opponent for the coming election is John Rohde (left).

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain

Rob Kerin was not spared the whip by voters in his own electorate, who deserted him to the tune of 9.5 per cent on primary and 8.1 per cent on two-party preferred – which more than eliminated his premiership dividend at the 2002 election. Labor's vote was only up 5.9 per cent, the gap between the two a product of Family First and the Greens who did not contest the seat last time. As usual, the electorate turned in a diverse range of booth results, with an even spread between Port Pirie West (which Labor won by 16.3 per cent on two-party) and Blyth (which Liberal won by 29.5 per cent).

OUTCOME: Liberal retain (3.4%)