SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ELECTION 2010

MAWSON Labor 2.7%
Region: Outer Southern Suburbs Federal division: Kingston
	BEN ERNST Gamers 4 Croydon HARRY TSEKOURAS Fair Land Tax - Tax Party MATT DONOVAN Liberal (bottom) DAVID SENIOR Save RAH PALITJA MOORE Greens MICHAEL LEE Independent LEON BIGNELL Labor (top)
Electoral District Boundaries Commission map

Mawson is a mixed electorate that includes the McLaren Vale vineyards and their surrounds south of Adelaide, along with two incursions into the outer suburbs: middle-income Woodcroft, and the developing lower-income areas of Hackham, Huntfield Heights and Noarlunga Downs nearer the coast. The Liberals maintained margins of over 10 per cent in McLaren Vale and nearby Willunga even amid the carnage of 2006, but this was more than cancelled out by Labor's strength in the more populous suburbs. A slight trend away from Labor has been evident over the past two decades, partly driven by a spurt of development in Woodcroft that has begun to taper off. McLaren Vale and Willunga moved sharply to Labor in relative terms over the past two federal elections, but this was not replicated at the intervening state election. The electorate has not been altered by the redistribution.

Labor held Mawson from its creation in 1970 until the defeat of the Corcoran government in 1979, and recovered it when John Bannon led the party back to office in 1982. Robert Brokenshire gained the seat for the Liberals as part of the 1993 landslide, going on to serve as Police and Emergency Services Minister from 1998 until the Kerin government's defeat in 2002. He put an end to the seat's bellwether status by retaining it at the 2002 election. Despite suffering a relatively mild 0.5 per cent drop on the primary vote in 2006, a 5.7 per cent two-party swing fuelled by Greens preferences saw him lose to Labor's Leon Bignell by 2.4 per cent after preferences. Brokenshire returned to parliament in July 2008 as a Family First member in the upper house, filling the vacancy created by the retirement of Andrew Evans.

Leon Bignell began his working life as a journalist for the now-defunct Adelaide News, later working for The Advertiser, Channel Seven, Channel Ten and the ABC, before entering the political field through jobs with the ALP and as media adviser to Patrick Conlon. A member of the Left faction, he was mentioned as a prospect for promotion ahead of the March 2009 reshuffle, but emerged empty-handed. Shortly after the March 2006 election it emerged Bignell was engaged to a fellow parliamentary newcomer, Bright MP Chloe Fox, but this was broken off a year later. In November 2008, Greg Kelton of The Advertiser reported “speculation in Labor circles” he would not stand again.

Early in 2008, then Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith anointed as Liberal candidate Kym Richardson, a former police officer who gained the corresponding federal seat of Kingston in 2004 before losing to Amanda Rishworth in November 2007. However, Richardson was forced to withdraw late in the year when it emerged he was the subject of a police investigation that would see charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice laid against him the following July. It was alleged that Richardson, himself a former police officer, had sought to influence an investigation into an assault involving his son in 2005 by impersonating a police officer over the phone while in his Canberra office. The charge was unable to proceed due to a six month statute of limitations, and he has expressed interest in a return to Kingston, potentially as an independent.

The preselection held in March 2009 was won by Matthew Donovan, described by the Southern Times Messenger newspaper as a “self-employed importer and property developer”. Speaking on ABC Radio early in the campaign, he said his core business was as a wholesaler of “cheap sunglasses”. Other candidates for preselection were Heidi Harris, adviser to Shadow Transport Minister Duncan McFetridge; Heidi Greaves, a public servant, former Onkaparinga councillor and candidate for Elder in 2006; and Alana Sparrow, Housing Industry Association lawyer and former media adviser to Richardson.

In December, Leon Bignell hosted a meeting of McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley wine industry representatives aggrieved at the encroachment of urban development on their areas. Plans for a Pioneer Homes housing estate on the historic Stony Hill vineyard, now well advanced, have been opposed by Bignell, Mitchell MP Kris Hanna and Onkaparinga council. Liberal candidate Matthew Donovan has been campaigning locally for protection of the Willunga Basin, conducting a community forum with Robert Brokenshire in January. A bill introduced by Brokenshire to prevent houses being built on existing farmland at Willunga, McLaren Vale and Aldinga Beach was passed by the Legislative Council in October, but was opposed by the government.

The formal announcement of the campaign came days after Mike Rann announced a plan to resolve Adelaide's signature infrastructure headache by duplicating the Southern Expressway. This presently runs one way towards the city in the morning before changing direction for the afternoon. The Liberals were trumped by Rann's surprise announcement, as they had planned to make a similar promise later in the day. Greg Kelton of The Advertiser reported Isobel Redmond had somehow “fluffed an opportunity to get in first” during a radio interview that morning, “despite prompting from her staff”. Labor's $445 million costing for the project ($370 million for the duplication, with the remainder to be spent on the Darlington interchange) compelled the Liberals to recalculate their own sums, which had been based on an earlier government estimate in August of around $280 million. Shadow Finance Minister Rob Lucas was sent out to “take one for the party” (in the words of a Liberal source quoted by Greg Kelton) by announcing that while Labor's promise would be matched, further details would not be forthcoming until later in the campaign. Isobel Redmond was apparently unable to do so because of “other engagements”, while Shadow Treasurer Steven Griffiths was “believed to be in Maitland”.

When the Liberals did announce their policy three days out from polling day, they did so by discreetly placing it on the party website with no public announcement – and, it emerged, without having properly accounted for it in the party's costings. According to a report the day before the election in the Financial Review, Shadow Treasurer Steven Griffiths declined to comment when asked how a Liberal government would fund the project. The confusion in the Liberal camp let Labor off the hook over the disparity between their new figure and the one provided in August, which Transport Minister Patrick Conlon said at the time was more than the government could afford. Conlon further sought to concentrate the electoral advantage from the announcement by promising quotas on the employment of workers on the project, which would require that 750 out of 1500 come from the southern suburbs, and that another 200 workers be young or from “other disadvantaged groups”. However, he conceded this unwieldy sounding policy did not come with an “iron-clad guarantee”.

Another locally significant roads promise followed in the first week of the campaign, when the Prime Minister joined Mike Rann yesterday in promising an $18 million overpass to improve safety at the intersection of Victor Harbor Road and Main Road in McLaren Vale.

PREDICTION: LIBERAL GAIN