THE POLL BLUDGER
Victorian Legislative Assembly Election 2006

BAYSWATER
Labor 2.8%

Bayswater is located in Melbourne's outer suburbs due east of the city. Labor's strongest booths are in Bayswater itself, at the outer edge of the electorate, while the Liberals perform better in Heathmont to the west. The electorate was created at the 1992 election following the abolition of Ringwood, which was one of the traditionally Liberal eastern suburbs seats that contributed to Labor's win in 1982. A 10.0 per cent swing the other way in 1992 delivered the new seat to Liberal candidate Gordon Ashley, who was eventually tipped out in 2002 by a 9.2 per cent swing to Labor's Peter Lockwood (left), a former Knox councillor with links to the Right faction National Union of Workers. Gordon Ashley, who is now 65, again won the local Liberal preselection ballot last November, but his endorsement was withdrawn by the party's administration committee, a body dominated by state party president Helen Kroger. Paul Austin of The Age reported that the ruling was made using "what many Liberals had assumed were reserve constitutional powers", and that the decision was justified to an unhappy party room on the grounds that Ashley was "involved in an ugly preselection contest, that he had never been regarded as frontbench material, that his 'name recognition' in the electorate was low and that his fund-raising record was poor". Ashley announced his intention to run as an independent, and in his place the Liberals nominated photography business owner Heidi Victoria (right), who was chosen out of a field that included former Young Liberal Movement president and Knox mayor Emanuele Cicchiello (who also contested the Ferntree Gully preselection).

Bayswater is strategically located at the northern end of the EastLink corridor, and the political convulsions surrounding the project consequently loom as the major local election issue. The Bracks government's single most contentious action in its second term was its April 2003 decision to fund the road by imposing tolls, going against its promise at the 2002 election. Then-Opposition Leader Robert Doyle sought to capitalise on the resulting outrage with his October 2004 promise to buy back the contract and make the road a freeway, an obviously unaffordable proposal that succeeded only in taking some of the heat off the government. In September 2005 Doyle conceded the policy was impractical and instead offered to subsidise half the cost of private vehicle tolls for the first five years. A survey of Liberal MPs conducted by the Herald-Sun found only four were willing to declare strong support for the policy; one told The Age the move was "disgraceful", and that the party would lose the next election. The decision was also opposed by the Nationals on the grounds that country taxpayers should not be subsidising city drivers. Days after Robert Doyle stood down as leader in May, his replacement Ted Baillieu accepted that full tolls would have to be imposed and announced the money would instead be spent oand other road projects in Melbourne's east and south-east.

ASSESSMENT: LIBERAL GAIN