THE POLL BLUDGER
Victorian Legislative Assembly Election 2006

FRANKSTON
Labor 5.8%

Frankston is a major commercial centre on the Mornington Peninsula about 40 kilometres south-east of the city. The electorate also incorporates Labor-leaning areas out to Karingal in the east, balancing out the conservative inclination of Frankston and the coast. It was first created in 1967 but was abolished between 1985 and 1992, concurrent with the existence of an electorate called Frankston North. Frankston changed hands along with government in 1982 and 1992, although it had a notional Liberal majority upon its recreation on the latter occasion by virtue of its more coastal orientation. That changed with the redistribution before the 2002 election, at which it lost coastal territory at both ends and moved inland to fill the void created by the abolition of Frankston East (which provided the redrawn Frankston with more of its voters than the previous incarnation of Frankston). This cut the Liberal margin from 10.7 per cent to 3.3 per cent, which was considerably less than member Andrea McCall needed to survive the 9.6 per cent swing to Labor in 2002. The new member was 28-year-old Alistair Harkness (left), who had previously worked in Steve Bracks' Williamstown electorate office. Labor sources say Harnkess was originally a member of the Independents faction, but has since aligned with the National Union of Workers element of the Right. His Liberal opponent is Rochelle McArthur (right), a former mayor of Frankston.

As the media's "Mitcham to Frankston Freeway" designation indicates (though this is in fact a misnomer – the road will extend to Carrum Downs to the north), the EastLink project looms as the major local issue of the campaign. 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. A Herald Sun-McNair Ingenuity poll conducted shortly after the Bracks government's freeway toll backflip pointed to 10 per cent swings against Labor here and in Mitcham. 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. Flow-on effects of the project will present further challenges specific to the local area, which faces a worsening of the bottlenecks caused by an industrial land boom – which, Simon Mann of The Age reports, has been partly fuelled by the promise of the freeway. This led to a pre-campaign commitment by the opposition to spend $250 million building a bypass on the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula freeways to divert traffic from the Frankston town centre.

Frankston has been heavily targeted by the Liberals with election promises, starting with the pre-campaign Frankston bypass commitment. The Frankston Standard reported that other promises for the electorate included "a technical college ... $1 million towards development of a new park ... a beach vehicle for authorities, removal of a Moorooduc Highway crossing, lower fares or free travel on public transport (a reference to the scrapping of zone three fares, of benefit to a large swathe of the eastern suburbs), school maintenance, more hospital beds and medical staff, and $730 a child in funding for pre-schoolers".

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain