THE POLL BLUDGER
Victorian Legislative Assembly Election 2006

MILDURA
Independent 18.5% versus Nationals

Mildura covers the north-western corner of the state, extending along the Murray River as far as and south to include Ouyen and Hopetoun. Police sergeant and Mildura shire president Russell Savage (right) won the seat at the 1996 election after easily outpolling Labor on the primary vote (35.7 per cent to 17.9 per cent) and then overcoming Liberal incumbent Craig Bildstein (45.2 per cent) on their preferences. He has since lifted his vote to 44.4 per cent in 1999 and 52.1 per cent in 2002. The seat previously changed hands in 1988 when Bildstien won it from the Nationals upon the retirement of Milton Whiting, the member since 1962. Labor's only wins in the seat's history were in 1945 and 1952. Upon entering parliament in 1996, Savage endured three years of condescending treatment at the hands of Premier Jeff Kennett, who was obviously not counting on Savage emerging as one of three independents holding the balance of power after the 1999 election. With Steve Bracks promising to adhere to a charter of demands that mostly involved overturning contentious Kennett government policies, Savage and his colleagues Susan Davies (since defeated member for the abolished Gippsland West) and Craig Ingram (member for Gippsland East) agreed to support a Labor minority government. More recently, Savage said the government had broken promises in the charter and could not be assured of his support if it lost its majority at the coming election.

In early 2004, the government moved to locate a proposed toxic waste dump (or "world-class containment facility", as the government would prefer to have it) in Nowingi near Ouyen. This replaces existing facilities in the metropolitan area, and was chosen over alternative sites in Pittong (in Ripon) and Baddaginnie (in Benalla). Students of electoral geography would have been less than surprised when the former site failed to get the gig. This issue was a major impetus for upper house MP Dianne Hadden's decision to quit the Labor Party and run against Geoff Howard as an independent in Ballarat East. A final decision has been deferred until after the election. In September, Jo Chandler of The Age reported that Russell Savage "had to fight local rumours that he didn't oppose the dump hard enough"; the rumour had it that he had cut a deal with the government over the return of passenger trains to the Mildura line, which had been one of the major themes of his campaign at the 1999 election.

Early in the final week of the campaign, the Victorian Electoral Commission dismissed a complaint by independent member Russell Savage about National Party flyers and advertisements which accused him of failing to criticise the Bracks government. Savage threatened to take the matter to the Court of Disputed Returns if he lost the seat.

ASSESSMENT: Independent retain