THE POLL BLUDGER
Victorian Legislative Assembly Election 2006

BELLARINE
Labor 8.3%

Bellarine takes its name from the peninsula to the east of Geelong which forms the western part of the mouth of Port Phillip Bay. The electorate includes the outer suburbs of south-eastern Geelong, which are very strong for Labor, and coastal towns on the peninsula which traditionally lean to the Liberals. Known from 1976 to 1985 as Geelong East, the seat was in Liberal hands until the 1979 election when Labor's Graham Ernst defeated Liberal member Phil Gude, who would later return as member for Hawthorn in 1985 and eventually serve as a senior minister in the Kennett government. Ernst was defeated at the 1992 landslide by Liberal candidate Garry Spry, who held the seat until his retirement at the 2002 election. It was then won for Labor by Barwon Health board president Lisa Neville (left) with a swing of 9.7 per cent. Neville won preselection with support from her ex-husband, ACTU federal secretary and Right faction heavyweight Richard Marles, leaving defeated candidate Heather Wellington loudly complaining of branch stacking. Support for these claims emerged from Roxanne Bennett, ex-girlfriend of Marles and political aspirant in her own right, who accused Marles of receiving money from head office to fund party memberships. Bennett conceded she had been persuaded to come forward with the allegation by "factional enemies" of Marles. The Liberal candidate is Don Gibson (right), a lawyer and company director.

On October 28, the Geelong Advertiser published a poll showing Neville trailing Gibson on the primary vote. The paper provided results from its survey of 352 respondents to within one decimal place, from which it can be inferred that the raw figures were Liberal 119, Labor 101, Greens 42, Family First 6 and others 15, with 69 undecided. The size of the latter figure suggests that undecided respondents were not given a follow-up question asking who they were leaning towards, a common failing of polls run by local newspapers. After distribution of the undecided, the results are Liberal 42 per cent, Labor 36 per cent, Greens 15 per cent, Family First 2 per cent, others 5 per cent.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain