SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ELECTION 2010

COLTON Labor 16.1%
Region: Western Suburbs Federal divisions: Hindmarsh/Port Adelaide
	PETER MORICHOVITIS Liberal (bottom) DENIS POWER Family First PAUL CAICA Labor (top) JIM DOUGLAS Greens YIANNIS STAMOS Fair Land Tax - Tax Party
Electoral District Boundaries Commission map

Colton is a coastal suburban electorate extending north of the river from Henley Beach to Grange and inland to Kidman Park. The redistribution has squared off its north-eastern boundaries, adding most of Seaton from Lee and Cheltenham and transferring Findon to the latter. Prior to 1993 the electorate was called Henley Beach, which had been held by Labor through the Bannon/Arnold years and beforehand by future Liberal state president Bob Randall for one term. Randall later stood for election several times outside the party's umbrella, attempting to win Colton as an independent in 1993 and 1997 and almost succeeding on the former occasion. It was instead won for the Liberals by Steve Condous, who had previously been the Lord Mayor. Condous survived in more comfortable style at the 1997 election, which he owed to a Labor resurgence that put second place well beyond the reach of Randall (who also headed the Christian Democratic Party's South Australian Senate ticket in 1998).

A substantial redistribution before the 2002 election cut the Liberal margin from 4.1 per cent to 0.9 per cent, at which point Condous retired. In a result that proved pivotal to the election outcome, the seat fell to Labor with a swing of 5.8 per cent. The incoming member was Paul Caica, a former firefighter and national secretary of the Left faction United Firefighters Union, who put the seat's marginal status to an end when he picked up a 16.5 per cent primary vote and 12.2 per cent two-party swing in 2006. He subsequently entered the ministry in the gambling, employment and training and youth portfolios, further gaining science and information economy in March 2007. Said to be highly regarded by Mike Rann, Caica was a surprise winner in the notoriously over-cautious July 2008 reshuffle, in which he traded gambling for industrial relations. In March 2009 he exchanged all his existing portfolios bar industrial relations for agriculture, food and fisheries, forests and regional development.

PREDICTION: Labor retain