THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

TORRENS
Labor 8.4%

Torrens covers inner suburbs north-east of the city and is bordered to the south by the river that bears its name, reaching from Greenacres and Klemzig in the west to Hope Valley in the east. It contains the booth of Gilles Plains East where the Family First vote in 2002 was 10.3 per cent, the highest in the state. An excess of voters has been resolved through a transfer of 2000 in Highbury to the seat's undernourished eastern neighbour, Newland. Torrens was created in its modern form at the 1993 election, which proved sufficiently disastrous for Labor that it could not carry what would normally have been a safe seat. Successful Liberal candidate Joe Tiernan died the following year, and Labor's Robyn Geraghty (right) narrowly won the seat at a by-election held in the aftermath of the Brown government's unpopular first budget. Geraghty enjoyed a big swing at the 1997 election and has served as Labor whip since 2001.

Geraghty became incidentally involved in the Ashbourne affair in late 2005 as a part-time employer of Gary Lockwood, a former DLP president and "key player" in the 1950s split. Speaking at a parliamentary inquiry, Lockwood claimed to have heard former deputy leader Ralph Clarke say he was offered board appointments as a quid pro quo for dropping a defamation action against Attorney-General Michael Atkinson and that he believed the offer was made on Atkinson's behalf, as the Liberals had long been attempting to establish. Lockwood also said Atkinson attempted to have him dismissed by bullying both Geraghty and his other part-time employer, Florey MP Frances Bedford. He had earlier defied his party by supporting Clarke's attempts to retain Enfield as an independent in 2002, and was reported by the Sunday Mail to have been behind a leak to the Liberal Party in September 2005.

The Liberal candidate is Adam Howard (left), a media adviser to federal Sturt MP Christopher Pyne.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain

Torrens was one of 11 Adelaide seats to record a double-digit swing to Labor, 10.7 per cent in this case. Labor easily won a clean sweep of all booths this time, with particularly large swings recorded in the two hold-outs from 2002, Dernancourt and Highbury South.

OUTCOME: Labor retain (19.1%)