THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

HEYSEN
Liberal 9.9%

Heysen is located in the Adelaide Hills, which has historically been the epicentre of the Australian Democrats. There is dispute as to whether Heysen rather than Waite is the successor to Mitcham, the only lower house seat ever held by the party. Heysen is the first rural seat beyond the sharply defined metropolitan area, so it shares borders with nine other electorates and has a very complicated time at redistributions. Rapid growth in neighbouring Finniss has forced it to absorb 1876 voters around Mount Compass at the far southern end, balanced out by the loss of 1273 voters around Hahndorf to Kavel (this transfer was originally to include Uraidla, but the Boundaries Commission accepted a recommendation from both parties that it not be split from Summertown) and another 682 in Belair to Waite. None of this has affected margins much, with the Liberals gaining 0.4 per cent in Heysen.

The seat was first created at the 1970 redistribution following the abolition of rural vote weighting, but disappeared between 1977 and 1985. David Wotton held the seat for the Liberals at both ends of the scale, from 1975 to 1977 and again from 1985 to his retirement in 2002, and the more rural seat of Murray in between. Wotton suffered a number of close calls over the years at the hands of the Democrats, with help from Labor's tactic of running dead. The Democrats remained competitive even at the 2002 election, polling 16.3 per cent and gathering enough minor party preferences to finish ahead of Labor, whose preferences put them within 4.0 per cent of victory. It also provided the Greens with their strongest result, a donkey vote-boosted 8.5 per cent.

The seat was nonetheless won for the Liberals by solicitor Isobel Redmond (left), who like Wotton is linked to the Evans family faction that is said to dominate local branches. Redmond was quickly promoted and made the front bench in April 2004, taking on family and communities, housing and disability services. She also made the news in June 2003 as one of two Liberals to support Frances Bedford's bill providing superannuation benefits to same-sex couples, the other being Unley MP Mark Brindal. Sober in substance as well as style, Redmond provided this intriguing quote to The Advertiser in 2002: "I drink lemon squash because on one famous occasion, I disgraced myself so badly I haven't had alcohol since".

Despite the apparently unassailable Liberal margin, a party insider told The Advertiser in January 2006 that "some unofficial polling was a bit wobbly". Labor candidate Andrew Christie (right) is "currently working for a national banking institution".

Isobel Redmond has an interesting relationship with the local Adelaide Hills District Council. In late 2004 she cited her dissatisfaction with it as the inspiration for a private member's bill providing for citizen-initiated council deamalgamations. Redmond complained in parliament that many councillors took the attitude that "now that I have moved into the hills this is sacred land and I am not going to let anyone move in and build here".

The notoriously hazardous Victor Harbour Road, a particularly dangerous stretch of which runs through Heysen, inspired the Liberals to make a keynote election promise to build a $130 million four-lane highway between Adelaide and Victor Harbour. The announcement scored an encouraging front-page headline ("Kerin to fix killer road") in The Advertiser, a paper many have faulted for coverage that seems tailored to curtail the extent of Labor's seemingly inevitable victory. The following day, Treasurer Kevin Foley accused the Liberals of being $200 million out on their costings, but Greg Kelton of The Advertiser reports that the Liberal estimate was supported by both the RAA and the Committee for Adelaide Roads.

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain

A 6.9 per cent swing made a marginal seat out of a traditional Liberal stronghold, although that's unlikely to be permanent. The result definitively finished the Democrats as a threat here, their vote falling 11.0 per cent to 5.3 per cent – still their best result in the state. The beneficiaries were the Greens, whose increase from 8.7 per cent to 17.7 per cent was enough that they might almost dream of winning the seat themselves. Labor was up 9.8 per cent to 28.1 per cent, and if that doesn't stick it's quite plausible that the Greens could overtake them to score second place in a future election, and then threaten the Liberals with the aid of Labor's preferences. The fall in the Liberal primary vote was a relatively modest 3.8 per cent, perhaps mitigated by a much smaller field of candidates this time (five rather than nine).

OUTCOME: Liberal retain (3.0%)