SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ELECTION 2010

WAITE Liberal 4.3%
Region: Inner Southern Suburbs Federal division: Boothby
	MARTIN HAMILTON-SMITH Liberal (top) JOHN VOTTARI Family First ADRIAN TISATO Labor (bottom) MATT WILSON Greens
Electoral District Boundaries Commission map

Waite is located about six kilometres south of the CBD, from Cumberland Park east into the Adelaide Hills at Brown Hill Creek. Apart from an addition of largely uninhabited territory at Crafers, it has not been affected by the redistribution. Either Waite or Heysen can be seen as the successor to Mitcham, the only lower house seat in any parliament ever to be held by the Australian Democrats. Robin Millhouse held Mitcham throughout the 1970s as his alignment changed from Liberal to Liberal Movement to Australian Democrats, and he was eventually offered a Supreme Court appointment in 1982 by a Tonkin Liberal government that hoped to recover his seat at a by-election. However, Heather Southcott won the by-election for the Democrats before losing the seat to Liberal factional moderate Stephen Baker when the general election was held later that year. Baker became Deputy Premier when Dean Brown led the Liberals to office in 1993, but was deposed in favour of Graham Ingerson as part of John Olsen's coup against Brown in November 1996. Baker announced his retirement an uncomfortable two months before the October 1997 election, which many interpreted as an act of revenge. The hastily conducted preselection resulted in a win for the Right, whose candidate Martin Hamilton-Smith defeated moderate upper house MP Robert Lawson. This prompted Dean Brown to complain of meddling by federal Right MPs including Nick Minchin, Grant Chapman and Andrew Southcott.

Martin Hamilton-Smith came to politics from a 23-year career with the SAS, which included command in the late 1970s and early 1980s of what he now describes as Australia's first anti-terrorism squad. This unit's training regimen was so harsh that men under his command were variously “shot dead, gassed, blown up, drowned and seriously wounded”. He found something of a change of pace in the late 1980s when he began operating a chain of childcare centres. He rose quickly up the ranks after entering parliament in 1997, serving as Tourism Minister in the Olsen/Kerin government and continuing as a senior front-bencher in opposition. In October 2005 he made a puzzling decision to contest the leadership ahead of an apparently certain election defeat, despite having recently been on the ropes after the leak of a confidential report he had prepared for the party room. The challenge was reportedly made at the instigation of Nick Minchin, Alexander Downer and party vice-president (now Senator) Cory Bernardi, who hoped to open the way for Iain Evans. Hamilton-Evans backed out on the morning of his planned challenge because he had been unable to harness even enough support to initiate a spill.

When the forces around Iain Evans and Vickie Chapman buried their hatchet after the 2006 election to endorse an Evans-Chapman leadership team, there was sufficient opposition to Chapman among conservatives to prompt talk of Hamilton-Smith emerging as a compromise candidate. He initially signalled his intention to put his name forward, but with the factional deal holding fast he opted to withdraw. When Evans failed to make headway in his first year in the job, Hamilton-Smith secured the backing of Chapman to challenge Evans on the proviso that she remain deputy, and duly defeated him 13-10 in a party vote on April 11. After two years of respectable performance in the job, Hamilton-Smith's leadership imploded in April 2009 when his dogged pursuit of the government over an alleged exchange of favours for donations with an organisation linked to the Church of Scientology proved to be based on forged documents. Having made the claims outside parliament as well as within, he was sued for defamation by government minister Tom Koutsantonis, former Senator and lobbyist Nick Boluks, party state secretary Michael Brown and party treasurer John Boag.

By July, Hamilton-Smith's position had deteriorated to the point where he felt compelled to bring on a spill after MacKillop MP Mitch Williams quit the shadow ministry. Williams' move was universally interpreted as an attempt to undermine Hamilton-Smith ahead of a pitch for his job, but he declined to put his name forward at the ensuing spill, leaving Chapman as Hamilton-Smith's sole rival. After inital expectations he would comfortably survive, Hamilton-Smith emerged from the vote without the support of a party room majority: while he won the vote 11 to 10, one member had abstained. He then called another spill for the following week, saying a more decisive result was required, but decided over the weekend not to contest it. There ensued a contest between Chapman and her successor as deputy, Heysen MP Isobel Redmond, with the latter winning 13 votes to nine. Hamilton-Smith was given the economic development, industry and trade, science and information economy and substance abuse portfolios in Redmond's shadow cabinet.

PREDICTION: Liberal retain