THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

STUART
Liberal 2.3%

Stuart is a vast electorate incorporating most of eastern South Australia, including Lake Eyre and most of the New South Wales border, plus more populous territory in the hinterland of the state's south-east. Most significantly the electorate includes Port Augusta, part of a short coastal stretch at the end of the Spencer Gulf. The widely spaced booths turn in a remarkable variety of results, including strong Labor majorities in Port Augusta and the mobile booth that services mostly Aboriginal communities, and even stronger Liberal ones in small towns further south.

The seat's history goes back to 1938, but it was dominated by Labor-voting Port Augusta in the days of rural vote weighting. Electoral reform in the early 1970s expanded it to include Port Pirie, and the name of Stuart went out of business when the two towns were separated at the 1993 election. The name was revived upon the abolition of Eyre in 1997 but Port Pirie has remained in Frome. In keeping with the long-term trend for remote electorates, Stuart was below quota going into the redistribution and has been shored up with more than 3000 voters around Kapunda from Schubert, while another adjustment removes 1000 voters from Flinders Ranges Shire Council (including the towns of Hawker and Quorn) to Giles.

Liberal member Graham Gunn (left) is currently the longest serving member of any parliament in Australia, having been member for Eyre from 1970 until its abolition in 1997 and member of Stuart since. He has spent most of his career in opposition but held the position of Speaker in the first term of the Brown/Olsen government, before the conservative independents who held the balance of power after the 1997 election demanded his replacement. Port Augusta has made his newer electorate less comfortable than the old, and it was believed the ascension of popular country boy Rob Kerin to Premier in late 2001 saved him from defeat at the March 2002 election. The 1.3 per cent margin was sufficiently close for Labor to consider challenging it on the basis of alleged irregularities (they made similar noises about Hartley), but they let it lie when the support of Peter Lewis put them in government. Kerin said Lewis's decision to back Labor may have been based on "misleading information about the counting of votes in Stuart". In 2000 Gunn faced a preselection challenge from Gulnare farmer Jeffrey Burgess, but he was uncontested ahead of the current election.

Gunn's Labor opponent for the second election running is Justin Jarvis (right), who seems to be a bit taller than Gunn. Jarvis is a Port Augusta resident and government regional development officer and has a son called Chifley. Jarvis is associated with the Labor Right, having previously worked as an officer for the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association. Greg Kelton of The Advertiser quotes a Labor source who spruiks Jarvis's "strong family links around the Quorn and Orroroo areas".

Greg Kelton of The Advertiser summarises the local issues as "outback road conditions, where Labor has cut out road gangs, juvenile crime in Port Augusta and rural health services". The first of these has led Gunn to grumble about the government's disregard for the country while it spends $21 million extending the Glenelg tram line in the city.

In the first week of the election campaign, The Advertiser published a poll of 550 voters which suggested that Graham Gunn faces the biggest test of his seemingly endless career. The poll had Justin Jarvis on 47 per cent of the decided primary vote against 42 per cent for Gunn, with Jarvis leading 52-48 on two-candidate preferred. This ran against the conventional wisdom that the seemingly inevitable pro-Labor swing might be limited to Adelaide.

ASSESSMENT: LABOR GAIN

Give or take Labor's Chloe Fox in Bright, no single election candidate has more cause to be pleased with their performance than the invincible Graham Gunn. Labor was unable to increase its majorities in and around Port Augusta, and Gunn's strong vote held firm in the small towns south-east of Port Augusta and due north Adelaide. Certainly the redistribution had nothing to do with Gunn's success – the newly added Kapunda booth (worth 9.2 per cent of the total) bucked the trend by swinging to Labor by 9.4 per cent, their second best result after the very small and extremely safe Liberal Wirrabara booth. Overall, Labor's primary vote was up 3.4 per cent and the Liberals' down 0.3 per cent, with Gunn enjoying a kinder flow of preferences than last time thanks to the entry of Family First who polled 4.6 per cent.

OUTCOME: Liberal retain (0.6%)