The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections

MORLEY Labor 9.8%*
New electorate Upper house region: East Metropolitan Federal divisions: Perth/Cowan/Stirling * John D'Orazio resigned from the ALP 26/6/2008
	AZEEM SHAH Independent REECE WHITBY Labor (bottom) ANDREW PARTINGTON Christian Democratic Party IAN BRITZA Liberal SALLY PALMER Greens JOHN D'ORAZIO Independent (top)

Located 10 kilometres north of the city, the new electorate of Morley extends from Dianella west through Noranda to Morley itself. It previously existed as an electorate from 1974 to 1983 and again from 1989 to 1996, being replaced by Morley-Swan in the interim. Arthur Tonkin held the seats from 1974 until his mid-term retirement in 1987, initiating a by-election at which Labor's Frank Donovan defeated current Liberal front-bencher Kim Hames. Donovan quit the ALP in October 1991 to sit out the rest of his term as an independent, and was succeeded in 1993 by Clive Brown. The 1994 redistribution saw Morley replaced by the notional Liberal seat of Ballajura, prompting Brown to jump for the safe option of Bassendean. Bayswater mayor and Italian community leader John D'Orazio contested the seat at the 1996 election and fell 44 votes short of defeating Liberal candidate Rhonda Parker (who had won abolished Helena at a by-election in 1994), picking up a 1.6 per cent swing. D'Orazio's second bid for preselection at the 2001 election met resistance from Brian Burke's power base, which backed lawyer Daryl Wookey. This led to a split in the Right faction which resulted in D'Orazio's “New Right” sidelining the Burke “Old Right” by forging a power-sharing relationship with Jim McGinty's LHMWU Left. D'Orazio went on to win the preselection and the seat, defeating Parker with a 5.0 per cent swing.

Following his comfortable re-election in 2005, D'Orazio was appointed to cabinet as Justice and Small Business Minister and won further promotion to Police and Emergency Services Minister in February 2006. From then on he was bedeviled by a series of political difficulties, starting with the revelation he had organised a meeting between Bayswater City Council official Adam Spagnolo and a businessman from the Italian community, which resulted in Spagnolo being charged over a promise of council work. The West Australian contentiously gave front-page headline prominence to a lawyer's suggestion at a Corruption and Crime Commission hearing that D'Orazio was a “Godfather” figure. D'Orazio was subsequently cleared of misconduct, but he hit further trouble three months later when it emerged he had been driving without a licence after failing to pay speeding fines. Alan Carpenter's decision merely to demote him received an overwhelmingly unfavourable reaction, promting D'Orazio to resign from cabinet. It was later ruled he had lost his licence in error as the relevant department had been sending its reminder notices to an old address. However, D'Orazio had by then been stripped of his party membership after the CCC revealed a phone recording in which he appeared to accept an offer of help from a panelbeater who said he could use his influence to have the fines overturned.

D'Orazio spent the next two years fighting to be readmitted to the ALP, eventually succeeding in April 2008 after threatening legal action. His renewed association with the party proved to be short-lived: D'Orazio was not granted the waiver required for preselection contestants who had not been members of the party for the previous 12 months, instead throwing his considerable local weight behind Bayswater mayor Lou Magro. The Premier had other ideas, announcing his backing of Channel Seven state political reporter Reece Whitby in April. This raised the ire of the now marginalised New Right, whose ministers (Michelle Roberts, John Kobelke and Margaret Quirk) voted against the state executive decision to give Whitby the preselection waiver which D'Orazio had been denied. Whitby went on to defeat Magro for preselection, and D'Orazio announced he would contest the seat as an independent.

A week before the election, The West Australian ran a Westpoll survey of presumably 200 respondents which pointed to the remarkable result of a 51-49 win for Liberal candidate Ian Britza, who had 38 per cent against 35.5 per cent for Reece Whitby and 12 per cent for John D’Orazio, with D'Orazio's preferences to split evenly between Britza and Whitby.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain