THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

NORWOOD
Labor 0.5%

Neighboured by the electorate of Adelaide to the west, Norwood is a gentrified old working class area currently famed for its café strip. The suburb itself is at the far southern of an electorate that extends north across the river to Klemzig. Labor's vote dips sharply in Kent Town and Hackney, directly opposite the central business district, and in the suburbs west of Payneham Road. The redistribution has effected only minor change, with 272 voters in and around the Lutheran Aged Care facility in Payneham going to Hartley.

Norwood was created in 1938 and was a marginal seat until Don Dunstan consolidated it for Labor after his election in 1953. Dunstan held the seat through two periods as Premier and ultimately retired due to ill health in 1979. The party had its first taste of defeat here in three decades at the election held later that year, which brought David Tonkin's one-term Liberal government to power. However, the result in Norwood was overturned after a legal challenge and Labor recovered it at the re-match, retaining it until it joined the long list of casualties of the 1993 election. The successful Liberal candidate was John Cummins, who had contested for Labor preselection way back in 1979. Cummins did well to come within 0.8 per cent of retaining his seat in 1997 but nonetheless lost to Labor's candidate, Norwood mayor Vini Ciccarello (right).

Ciccarello won Labor endorsement as a "Premier's choice" candidate and remains factionally unaligned. A warm and fuzzy profile in the Sunday Mail reported that Ciccarello "accepts she will never be a minister in the Rann Government, preferring the heat of a Meals on Wheels kitchen than the heat of political battle". Her modest ambitions, combined with her infrequent contributions to parliament and time spent at Norwood Parade cafés (also frequented by another Norwood resident, Mike Rann), have led opponents to brand her as lazy. She is best known to the nation at large for her habit of pinching the sagging bottoms of her male colleagues, prominent victims including "a former premier, two South Australian governors, a former Catholic archbishop of Adelaide and even former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam". One such episode in parliament prompted a rebuke from the Liberal Party's unofficial "minister for fun", Heysen MP Isobel Redmond, who complained of behaviour that would see male MPs "thrown out of the house", and it came to a stop after a talking-to from the Premier.

The Liberals have optimistically targeted the seat with their highest-profile new candidate, former Adelaide Crows star Nigel Smart (left). Smart has held management positions with Lion Nathan and Toyota and was spoken of as a potential candidate for Kingston at the 2004 federal election. Two opinion polls published in The Advertiser last year, one immediately after Smart's preselection in March and another in September, suggest his star quality may not be enough. Ciccarello's share of the decided primary vote was 45 per cent and 46 per cent respectively compared with 41 per cent and 42 per cent for Smart, with a two-party split of 55-45 in each case. A more recent Advertiser poll published on January 20 showed little change, with Labor leading 44 per cent to 39 per cent on primary and 56-44 on two-party. Five days earlier, "senior party sources" were quoted in the Sunday Mail protesting that their own polling "is showing better than the published polls suggest". Another former footballer, Rick Neagle of the Norwood SANFL club, is taking the field under the Dignity for Disabled banner.

Ciccarello's period as local mayor was back in the spotlight when she faced legal action over the Parade Central development, which developer Carlo Boscaini claimed the council had stalled to benefit a rival development on council-owned land. This was settled in December 2004 with a payment of $1.1 million from a council insurer, after which Boscaini called for an independent inquiry into Ciccarello's conduct.

Labor got a rude shock two days out from the election when The Advertiser published a poll showing the clear lead it had maintained in earlier polls conducted over the previous year had all but evaporated. Vini Ciccarello's vote had plunged from 42 per cent to 31 per cent with Nigel Smart steady on 38 per cent, with the undecided vote continuing to mount to 18 per cent. The Advertiser calculated that Labor was at 50.3 per cent on two-party preferred, but alternative calculations produced by Quentin Black, renowned Labor number-cruncher and unsuccessful candidate for Hartley in 1998 and 2002, put it at 47 per cent. Presumably Labor did not benefit from choosing the electorate as the venue for its major campaign rally, held on the last Sunday of the campaign. Another Advertiser poll published a fortnight earlier had Ciccarello leading Smart 44 per cent to 40 per cent, an almost identical result to three earlier polls.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain

Late campaign talk that Labor would struggle in Norwood was at least borne out to the extent that it returned the smallest two-party swing in Adelaide. Vini Ciccarello picked up 3.7 per cent on two-party preferred, another unspectacular result to add to the swing against her in 2002 – though in fairness, this is possibly due to changing demographics which are reckoned to be adverse for Labor in and around the CBD. Booth results were variable, but the swings tended to be bigger in the far north than in the trendier area around The Parade. Presumably Nigel Smart's political ambitions do not end here – next time he goes for preselection, he can point to a 1.4 per cent drop in the primary vote that compared with a Liberal average in Adelaide of 7.8 per cent.

OUTCOME: Labor retain (4.2%)