SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ELECTION 2010

STUART Liberal 0.4%
Outgoing member: Graham Gunn (Liberal) Region: Port Augusta/Outback Federal divisions: Grey/Wakefield/Barker
	SYLVIA HOLLAND Family First JANE ALCORN Greens SEAN HOLDEN Country Labor (bottom) DAN VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN Liberal (top) ROB WILLIAMS Independent
Electoral District Boundaries Commission map

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. Population decline has abated somewhat over the past decade, with the result that the redistribution has unusually effected negligible change. The contest here will be framed by the retirement of Liberal member Graham Gunn, who has the second longest parliamentary record of any Australian MP after Tasmanian veteran Michael Hodgman (who will also be bowing out at the Tasmanian election on the same day). The loss of his personal vote means it is the only seat Labor can seriously hope to gain from the Liberals.

By far the largest population centre in the electorate is Port Augusta, part of a short coastal stretch at the end of the Spencer Gulf. There remains a sharp divide between voting behaviour in Port Augusta and the solidly conservative remainder, although the city has been careening away from Labor since the late 1980s. Labor's federal two-party vote in Port Augusta dropped from 64.0 per cent in 1993 to 46.4 per cent in 2004, helping turn Grey solidly Liberal, before WorkChoices and the retirement of sitting member Barry Wakelin boosted it to 59.1 per cent in 2007.

Stuart's history goes back to 1938, but it was more heavily dominated by 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 redistribution. It was revived in 1997 upon the abolition of Eyre, which Graham Gunn had safely held since 1970, but Port Pirie has remained in Frome. Gunn held Stuart by narrow margins at three successive elections, of 1.5 per cent in 1997, 1.3 per cent in 2002 and 0.6 per cent in 2007. Labor considered a legal challenge against its 2002 defeat on the basis of alleged irregularities (they made similar noises about Hartley), but let it lie when the support of Hammond MP Peter Lewis unexpectedly put them in government. Defeated Liberal Premier Rob Kerin said Lewis's decision to back Labor may have been based on “misleading information about the counting of votes in Stuart”.

Gunn did extraordinarily well to defend his 2.1 per cent margin in 2006, the 1.5 per cent swing being the smallest of any Labor-versus-Liberal contest in the state. However, the subdued result partly reflected the cavernous divide between the metropolitan (9.3 per cent) and non-metropolitan (2.8 per cent) swings to Labor, as well as a correction after the majority of One Nation's 7.4 per cent vote went Labor's way as preferences in 2002. The best performing minor party in 2006 was Family First (4.6 per cent), which directed preferences to Gunn. Nonetheless, it is perhaps significant that the two biggest swings were recorded in the two major booths added by the redistribution – the rapidly growing Barossa Valley region towns of Kapunda (9.5 per cent) and Truro (11.4 per cent), formerly in Schubert – suggesting the loss of Gunn's personal vote will give the Liberals a substantial hurdle to clear if they are to retain the seat.

The new Liberal candidate is Dan van Holst Pellekaan, a Southern Flinders Tourism officer and former national basketball player, who won the nod ahead of state Motor Trade Association vice-president Neville Gibb and Jamestown solicitor John Voumard. Labor's candidate is Sean Holden, Port Augusta Rotary Club president and a regional manager with the Department of Trade and Economic Development.

Mike Rann went to Port Augusta late in the first week of the campaign to promote $18.2 million of local spending on the mining industry and a promised $5 million sporting complex. Late in the second week, Isobel Redmond promised to spend $35 million on a new 55-bed hospital at Tanunda, on which the Liberals promised to spend $12 million during their unsuccessful bid for re-election in 2002. This would replace existing hospitals at Angaston and Tanunda (47 beds between them), which would respectively be demolished and converted into an aged care facility. While located in safe Liberal Schubert, the 30 kilometre radius it would serve covers parts of Stuart and Light (Labor 2.4 per cent). Health Minister John Hill complained the funding came from the $1 billion the Liberals said they would save by rebuilding Royal Adelaide Hospital, a figure hotly disputed by the government.

PREDICTION: Liberal retain