THE POLL BLUDGER
South Australian House of Assembly Election 2006

UNLEY
Liberal 9.1%

Internal party politics is never a pleasant business, but the South Australian Liberal Party has no peer for the hostility of its rivalries and the longevity of its grudges. The recent history of Unley is a vivid case in point. The electorate is located directly south of the central business district, from Goodwood (where Labor has a slight edge) eastwards to Glenunga and Myrtle Bank, with Cross Road as the southern border. It was a safe seat for the Liberals from its creation in 1938 until Australian wicket-keeper Gil Langley's victory in 1962, which began a long period of Labor control. This had severely weakened by 1993, and it was clear long before that year's election that it would go Liberal in the landslide sure to follow the State Bank collapse. It thus presented competing factions with an opportunity to extend their empires, and an energetic battle developed between Mark Brindal, who had won the abolished seat of Hayward from Labor in 1989, and John Cummins, the preferred candidate of moderate powerbrokers Robert and Di Hill. Brindal prevailed and Cummins had to settle for the lesser prospect of Norwood, which he won in 1993 and lost in 1997. The battle lines drawn in this conflict spilled over into the preselection for the federal seat of Boothby after Liberal veteran Steele Hall retired at the 1996 election. Robert Hill saw this as an opportunity to parachute from the Senate to the House, in pursuit of ambitions which extended to the prime ministership. Brindal exercised his influence in local branches to thwart him, and the seat instead went to young hopeful Andrew Southcott.

Brindal served in a bewildering array of portfolios in the government's second term, winning promotion to the front bench in February 2000 with the newly created water resources ministry. This failed to boost his authority in his ongoing preselection struggle with David Pisoni (right), a furniture manufacturer and local party sub-branch president. Pisoni made his first attempt to topple Brindal before the 1997 election, which was put to a stop when then-Premier Dean Brown intervened on Brindal's behalf despite being factionally opposed to him. Brindal did not let that stop him backing John Olsen's successful challenge to Brown's leadership four months later. Pisoni's influence continued to grow in the following term as local branches fell under the control of moderate elements associated with federal Sturt MP Christopher Pyne, and he launched a second preselection challenge ahead of the 2002 election. The stakes were raised in the interim by a redistribution that added 4.7 per cent to the Liberal margin, and the second contest proved even more bitter than the first. Highlights included a defamation suit by Pisoni against Brindal and enough branch stacking from both sides (including more than 60 membership applications to the Brindal-controlled Kings Park branch from Echuca in Victoria) to prompt changes to be made to the party constitution.

Brindal survived for a second time, but his star waned after the Liberals entered opposition and he was dumped from the front bench in the April 2004 reshuffle to "make way for new talent". A few months earlier, The Advertiser anonymously received a statement from one of Brindal's school students from the late 1960s who alleged he used to hit pupils with a yardstick. This prompted Brindal to threaten those circulating it with criminal defamation action that would "cost them their houses, their savings and possibly their careers". All the while his position in party branches weakened and he ultimately decided to jump rather than be pushed. He later said he was hoping a compromise candidate would emerge to thwart Pisoni; on another occasion he said he might have held on had he forced the issue, though most published opinion suggests otherwise. A candidate did emerge in the person of Chris Kenny, a former journalist and media adviser to Alexander Downer whom Brindal thought the "type of person" who might become leader. Kenny only managed 19 preselection votes to Pisoni's 36, with company consultant Tim Hender scoring seven. At first Brindal threatened to challenge Pisoni as an independent at the election, but he was persuaded to settle for Liberal endorsement for the much less attractive prospect of Adelaide. That came to an end in August 2005 when he outed himself as a bisexual and admitted to an affair with a 24-year-old man whose financial affairs were administered by the public trustee due to "mental incapacity". Brindal said he had been compelled to go public because the man's foster father was trying to extort him. Forced by his party division to withdraw, he continued to keep open the option of contesting Adelaide as an independent, before finally accepting the inevitable and announcing his retirement in October.

Labor's candidate, Unley mayor Michael Keenan (not to be confused with the Liberal member for the federal seat of Stirling in Perth), was chosen by Mike Rann without a preselection vote through the "premier's choice" rule, which he earlier used to install Jane Lomax-Smith in Adelaide and Vini Ciccarello in Norwood. Keenan unwisely described his subsequent admission to the Labor Party as a "dubious pleasure" in a mayoral report to Unley Council. This will be Keenan's third state election campaign, having previously run as an independent in 1997 and on the 2002 Legislative Council ticket for Clubs SA, which ran in protest against perceived Liberal government favouritism to the hotel industry in dealing out pokies licences. He was also Labor's federal candidate for Boothby way back in 1984.

On March 2, The Advertiser ran a poll of 516 voters which suggested the Liberals were in big trouble in this normally safe seat. David Pisoni led Michael Keenan 45 per cent to 40 per cent on the undecided vote, but trailed 51-49 on two-candidate preferred. If that sounds like a big primary vote gap for Labor to narrow, it should be noted that the Greens (7 per cent) dominated the minor party vote with Family First (2 per cent) barely registering. The accompanying article also reported that Mark Brindal was still not ruling out standing as an independent, and it was only when nominations closed later that day that it became clear that he would not do so. In the final week of the campaign, the Electoral Commission forced Pisoni to withdraw a radio advertisement critical of "Labor’s infill plan" and its impact on suburban housing density.

ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain

The 8.0 per cent swing to Labor was roughly as expected in absolute but not relative terms. It was expected that Unley would record an above-average swing due to a departing incumbent, the circumstances of that departure and the strength of Labor's candidate. Instead, the swing was 1.2 per cent below an Adelaide average that would have delivered Labor the narrowest of victories if it had been replicated here. Typically for an inner city area, Family First recorded a below-par vote of 2.5 per cent in a seat they did not contest in 2002, while the Greens profited from the Democrats' decline to lift 3.7 per cent to 9.8 per cent.

OUTCOME: Liberal retain (1.1%)