2007 election: Kalgoorlie
I’ve felt all along the Liberal Party would retain Kalgoorlie, but lose the national election, and nothing has happened to change my mind. I could be wrong on both counts, of course.
I do feel however, it will be closer in both cases than I thought a week ago. The latest Galaxy poll shows the Coalition within range of winning, especially if you consider they could take the prize with 48 percent of the two-party preferred vote.
In Kalgoorlie, people might be caught up in the tide of a national swing. I don’t really think industrial issues will be all that influential in how people vote.
The local Liberals are obviously concerned about people voting to change the government for change’s sake, because their campaigning has turned negative in the past two days.
I think it was Paul Murray who wrote in The West Australian a few weeks ago that focus groups must have shown that voters want a plan because every leader and candidate claims to have one that’s better than the other mob.
Labor’s message today was on “the plan”, whatever it is, mostly rhetoric as far as I could tell. Liberal MP Barry Haase though was warning of a return to the “dark ages” if Labor gets in. Lock up your children, and all that sort of stuff.
I sat with Barry at a Kalgoorlie-Boulder chamber of commerce election breakfast this morning because I was interested to know what he’ll do if he’s in opposition tomorrow night. Barry has only been on the government team during his 12 years in Parliament.
I suspect there is more than a small element of maverick in him. Let loose on the opposition benches he might make Bob Katter sound rational.
I wrote the election lead for tomorrow’s paper and checked the Centrebet odds before closing off the story. At 4pm Haase was at $1.16 and Thiel (Labor) at $4.50. Labor drifted substantially in the market during the day, showing the punters are confident of a Liberal retain in Kalgoorlie.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
So what do you make of the result? I see it’s a 4.7% swing to the ALP and it’s been climbing since the boothes closed.
Makes Kalgoorlie officially marginal.. could bode interesting things for the future and particularly the next election I think.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
The late swing would have been the desert votes coming in.
I think the best outcome for any electorate is to be a marginal seat on the government side. The second best result is to be an opposition marginal, which is what Kalgoorlie has become.
I expect Labor to take Kalgoorlie very seriously for a range of reasons, so the outcome was a good result in that respect.