THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

LEE
Labor 9.7%

Lee contains the Lefevre Peninsula suburbs immediately opposite Port Adelaide, including Semaphore, and extends southwards along the coast to Tennyson. The redistribution has expanded the former area, a noted hotbed of seditious activity (the 13.3 per cent vote for the Greens at Semaphore in 2001 was their highest in the state), with the addition of Birkenhead and parts of neighbouring suburbs. At the southern end, a territory swap with Colton adds about 1100 voters south of Royal Adelaide Golf Course and removes 2000 in the coastal suburb of Grange. Lee replaced the traditional Labor seat of Albert Park (the suburb of that name is now in Cheltenham to the east) when it was abolished before the 1993 election, at which it was possibly the Liberal Party's most unlikely win. The accidental one-term member was Joe Rossi, an advocate of what Antony Green describes as "innovative policy ideas such as sterilising unmarried mothers after the third child, or introducing a modern version of poor houses for welfare recipients". He is also remembered for being thrown out of parliament for walking into the chamber eating a pie.

Labor easily won the seat in 1997 and it has since been a safe haven for Michael Wright (left), son of Jack Wright, a former deputy premier, Australian Workers Union boss and "mate of Mick Young" (according to Crikey). Wright the younger, who also did his Labor apprenticeship in the AWU, quickly made it to the front bench and took on the industrial relations and transport portfolios when the Rann government came to power. The Liberals made the most out of his transfer from transport to administrative services and gambling at the March 2004 reshuffle, and former Independent Weekly columnist Alex Kennedy has called him "the weak link in the chain". His Liberal opponent is Peter Rae (right), a North Brighton car salesman.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain

The swing to Labor of 9.6 per cent was roughly average for Adelaide, but slightly lower than might have been expected given that Labor's primary vote was up 12.2 per cent and the Liberals' down 10.8 per cent. The explanation no doubt lies in the 4.6 per cent vote for Family First, who did not contest the seat in 2002. The swing swamped even the booths in the southern part of the electorate which returned Liberal majorities in 2002. In particular, the Liberals must have done something to upset the voters of Seaton West – the swing there was 20.4 per cent. The Greens' vote was up 2.2 per cent to 7.6 per cent and remained strongly concentrated around Birkenhead and Semaphore.

OUTCOME: Labor retain (19.3%)