LIB 8.9%
Incumbent MP
Mal Washer, since 1998.
Geography
Northern Perth. Moore covers suburbs along the coast on the northern fringe of Perth. Moore covers most of Joondalup council area and a small part of Wanneroo council area.
Redistribution
Moore previously covered the suburb of Waterman at the southern end of the seat. The recent redistribution swapped Waterman for Mindarie and Clarkson at the northern end of the seat.
History
Moore was created for the 1949 election, and has been dominated by conservative parties for most of its history. It has been held by the Country Party or Liberal Party for most of that period, although it was won by the ALP at three elections in the 1980s and was retained by a former Liberal independent in the 1990s.
Moore was first won in 1949 by the Country Party’s Hugh Leslie, a former state MP. Leslie held the seat until 1958, when he lost the seat to the Liberal Party’s Hugh Halbert. Leslie won the seat back in 1961, and retired in 1963.
Donald Maisey won the seat for the Country Party in 1963. He held the seat for the next decade, and lost in 1974 to the Liberal Party’s John Hyde. Hyde helped form ‘the Dries’ as a group of Liberal backbenchers supporting mass privatisations and deregulation, and was highly critical of the Fraser government. Hyde lost his seat in 1983.
The ALP’s Allen Blanchard won Moore in 1983, and held the seat until the 1990 election, when he lost to Liberal candidate Paul Filing.
Paul Filing was re-elected in 1993, but in 1995 he lost Liberal endorsement for Moore, and he became an independent. He managed to win re-election in 1996, but he lost the seat in 1998 to Liberal candidate Mal Washer.
Washer has won re-election in Moore at the 2001, 2004 and 2007 elections.
Candidates
- George Gault (One Nation)
- Mal Washer (Liberal) – Member for Moore since 1998.
- Meg Birch (Christian Democratic Party)
- Paul Barrett (Family First)
- Sheridan Young (Greens)
- Jeremy Brown (Labor)
Political situation
Moore is quite safe for the Liberal Party.
2007 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Mal Washer | LIB | 38,262 | 54.45 | -0.89 |
| Geraldine Burgess | ALP | 22,902 | 32.95 | +1.14 |
| Annette Pericic-Herrmann | GRN | 5,906 | 8.40 | +1.32 |
| Lachlan Dungey | CDP | 1,556 | 2.21 | +0.09 |
| Douglas Croker | FF | 811 | 1.15 | +1.15 |
| George Gault | ON | 719 | 1.02 | -1.02 |
| Arthur Harvey | CEC | 115 | 0.16 | -0.12 |
2007 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Mal Washer | LIB | 41,576 | 59.17 | -1.66 |
| Geraldine Burgess | ALP | 28,695 | 40.83 | +1.66 |
These results do not take into consideration the effects of the redistribution.
Booth breakdown
Most of Moore’s population lives in Joondalup council, along with a small part of Wanneroo. Joondalup booths have been divided between the north, centre and south, and collectively make up over 90% of the population.
The Liberal Party won a majority in all parts of the seat. They won 64.7% in the southern part of the seat, with around 57% in the remainder of the seat.
| Voter group | GRN % | LIB 2CP % | Total votes | % of ordinary votes |
| Joondalup North | 7.06 | 57.22 | 24,163 | 37.93 |
| Joondalup Central | 8.78 | 56.87 | 19,668 | 30.88 |
| Joondalup South | 9.02 | 64.69 | 14,379 | 22.38 |
| Wanneroo | 6.13 | 57.20 | 5,612 | 8.81 |
| Other votes | 9.68 | 60.25 | 11,779 |
Interesting how between Hepburn Avenue and Ocean Reef Road, there are sharp differences in results of the booths on either side of Marmion Avenue.
Ben: it’s probably worth noting that this seat used to cover a few hundred km north of Perth, hence the Country Party holding it. (It’s named after the Moore River, I think… same deal as the state seat of Moore, which contains most of the towns on the Brand Hwy and Midlands Rd.) It’s been shifted around a fair bit due to the successive creation of O’Connor, Cowan and Pearce around it. A similar thing applies to Swan. A third of WA’s seats didn’t exist before 1980 (enlargement of parliament combined with sleepy little boomtown’s population growth), so it’s hard to compare current seats with anything that existed over the decades.
Also, this part of Perth has more English people than some parts of England – Joondalup and Wanneroo councils have something like 20% of their population born in the UK. Neighbours (the soapie) has a lot to answer for.
Matt’s comment actually shows up a long-term exception in Moore – the northern part of Padbury, Beldon, Craigie and Heathridge are significantly lower on the socio-economic ladder than anywhere else in the electorate. Clarkson (which has just been added to it) is not far off those areas, and it will be interesting to see how much of the Liberal vote there was a personal vote for Judi Moylan.
South of Whitfords Avenue, the electorate is both very affluent, and fairly established now, with all of those areas having been built before 1990 with some exceptions here and there. Hillarys and Sorrento and Duncraig are home to many of the managers of CBD big businesses, and certainly there is a premium for living close to Sorrento Quay Marina.
The middle (between Whitfords and Hodges) was settled by the English from the late 70s to the early 90s, and is divided between the coastal region (Kallaroo/Mullaloo) which although Liberal is not as affluent as the southern areas and at state level has gone Labor several times, and the inland region which I mentioned in the first para which is almost within the Labor-held state seat of Joondalup. This area once famous for its Englishness seems to have “mainstreamed” over the years.
North of Hodges Drive are the newer areas built in the early 90s through early 00s as Perth marched northward, with a very strong English population. Connolly is safe Liberal and built around a golf course. Iluka, where everybody is mortgaged to the eyeballs despite having high incomes, and Currambine/Kinross and Edgewater which are decidedly more middle class with more “tradies” in the population, will be interesting ones to watch. The former unpredictable booth of Burns Beach should now be safe Liberal as recent developments will have neutralised the caravan park vote.
The new areas should actually improve Labor’s vote. Mindarie is actually moderately established (90s) while Clarkson is newer (mostly early 00s), but this belies a stark, stark social difference between the two. Clarkson has more ethnic diversity than any other suburb in the outer north and is next to Merriwa which has a lot of Homeswest housing, while Mindarie is uniformly the sort of white, upwardly mobile types who own boats. However, Clarkson’s population is increasing while Mindarie’s is stable.
What do I think? The seat’s too safe for Labor to win, but the Liberals can no longer take the Joondalup suburbs (apart from Ocean Reef proper and Connolly) for granted in the long term. If there was to be a change in the future, it would be that the southern safe areas weaken (say from 65% to 55%) and a Labor vote would come from the centre, north and far north of this electorate. As with Stirling, the southern established areas are shrinking in population, meaning that the electorate will gradually move northwards to absorb suburbs like Merriwa, Ridgewood and Butler which are even more Labor than Clarkson.
Wikipedia explains the Labor period from 1983 to 1990 in the following terms:
“…the creation of Cowan [in 1984] in the suburbs north of Reid Highway to Whitfords Avenue saw Moore transformed into a safe Labor seat with a population centred on Midland, but still including the Chittering, Gingin and Dandaragan local government areas to the north.
The creation of Pearce at the 31 March 1989 redistribution pushed Moore into the now heavily urban and relatively affluent coastal areas north of Reid Highway, removing areas like Midland and Beechboro completely and making it a reasonably safe Liberal seat.”
It would appear the Labor candidate here is Jeremy Brown.
is someone able to tell me where I can find a list of candidates for Moore for this election? I can’t find any info on the AEC website.
Thanks
Neil
Neil
Nominations don’t close until next week, so there’ll be no final list of candidates until Friday week.
So far in this seat the declared candidates are the sitting Liberal MP Mal Washer, Jeremy Brown from the ALP, George Gault from One Nation, and, not yet listed on this page Sheridan Young for the Greens.
My prediction: Without studying this in too much detail it sounds as though Libs are already doing quite well here, so probably no more than a 1% swing to them.