O’Connor – Election 2010

LIB 12.8%

Incumbent MP

• Wilson Tuckey, Member for O’Connor since 1980.
• Barry Haase, Member for Kalgoorlie since 1998.

Geography
Southern half of Western Australia. O’Connor is a massive rural and regional seat stretching across southern parts of Western Australia. Major towns include Kalgoorlie, Esperance and Albany.

Redistribution
O’Connor was radically redrawn in the last redistribution. Prior to the redistribution, O’Connor formed a ring around the heavily-populated part of Western Australia, stretching from Albany on the southern coast of Western Australia, all the way to Geraldton, on the Indian Ocean coast north of Perth. The large landmass east of O’Connor was contained in the seat of Kalgoorlie, the largest single-member constituency by landmass, at least in a western democracy, covering over 2.2 million square kilometres.

The redistribution saw Kalgoorlie abolished, and O’Connor redrawn from a ring seat into a massive southern seat, with the northern parts of Kalgoorlie and the former O’Connor formed into the new seat of Durack.

The former seat had a margin of 16.5% over the ALP, although in 2007 the Nationals came close to overtaking the ALP, which would have given them the opportunity to win the seat. The new seat has a margin of 12.8%, with the Nationals’ strongest area broken between O’Connor and Durack.

History – O’Connor
O’Connor was founded in 1980. It has been held by a single MP for the last three decades. The seat was won in 1980 by Wilson Tuckey.

Tuckey served on the Liberal frontbench from 1984 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1996. He served as a minister in the Howard government from 1998 to 2003.

Tuckey has developed a reputation as a maverick and a member of the Liberal Party’s far right. The ALP has never threatened Tuckey’s hold on the seat, but in 2007 he was considered at risk of losing. The Nationals gained a large swing and came within 3% of overtaking the ALP, while Tuckey’s primary vote fell below 50%.

History – Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie was an original federation electorate. The seat regularly swung back and forth between the ALP and the Liberal Party.

Free Trade candidate John Kirwan won Kalgoorlie in 1901. He lost the seat in 1903. Kirwan later served as an independent member of the Western Australian Legislative Council from 1908 to 1946.

The ALP’s Charles Frazer won Kalgoorlie in 1903. He served as a minister in the second Fisher Labor government from 1910 until 1913, when the government was defeated. Frazer died six months after the 1913 election.

The ensuing by-election was won by Hugh Mahon. He had previously held the seat of Coolgardie from 1901 to 1913, when the seat was abolished, and he failed to win election for the new seat of Dampier. Mahon had been a minister in the Watson government and the first Fisher government.

Mahon again served as a minister in the third Fisher government in 1914, and served as a minister until the Labor Party split in 1916, when he remained loyal to the party. Mahon lost the seat in 1917 to Edward Heitmann of the Nationalists, but won it back in 1919.

In 1920, Mahon made comments attacking the British Empire and its policies in Ireland after the death of a hunger-striking Irish nationalist. In response, Prime Minister Billy Hughes moved a motion in the House of Representatives to expel Mahon for sedition, disloyalty and conduct “inconsistent with the oath of allegiance”, and Mahon was expelled. He remains the only member of the federal Parliament to be expelled.

Mahon suffered a swing at the ensuing by-election, losing to Nationalist candidate George Foley.

Foley lost in 1922 to the ALP’s Albert Green, a former state MP. He served first as Minister for Defence and then Postmaster-General in the Scullin government, and held the seat until his death in 1940, shortly after the 1940 election.

The 1940 by-election was won by the ALP’s Herbert Johnson. He was appointed to the Chifley government’s first ministry in 1945 after the death of Prime Minister John Curtin, and he served in the ministry until the government’s defeat in 1949.

Johnson retired in 1958, after losing Labor endorsement, partly due to his criticism of ALP leader HV Evatt. At the 1958 election, the Liberal Party’s Peter Browne won the seat on DLP preferences, despite the ALP’s Fred Collard leading on primary votes.

Browne lost to Collard in 1961. Collard held Kalgoorlie until his defeat at the 1975 election, losing to Liberal candidate Mick Cotter.

Cotter held the seat at the 1977 election before losing to the ALP’s Graeme Campbell in 1980.

Campbell, while being an ALP member, was on the far right of the party, supporting uranium mining and opposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa and Aboriginal land rights. In the early 1990s he flirted with anti-immigration groups, and his constant differences with the Labor government saw him expelled from the ALP in 1995.

Campbell won re-election in 1996, gaining Liberal preferences to help defeat the second-placed Labor candidate.

Campbell was one of five independents in the new parliament in 1996, alongside two disendorsed former Liberal MPs from Perth, progressive NSW independent Peter Andren, and ex-Liberal Pauline Hanson.

In 1996 he founded the Australia First Party, along similar lines to the One Nation party formed by fellow independent MP Pauline Hanson in 1997. Campbell’s party failed to grab the public’s imagination in the same way as Hanson’s, and his party was largely overshadowed by One Nation. He came third in Kalgoorlie in 1998, when Liberal candidate Barry Haase topped the primary vote with barely 28%. Incredibly, Campbell’s 22.8% and the 8.4% for One Nation would have produced a combined vote greater than either Liberal or Labor.

Campbell later went on to contest the Senate in 2001 for One Nation, and run for Kalgoorlie again in 2004 and the Senate in 2007, but never came close to winning again.

Haase won Kalgoorlie in 1998 with only a 2.1% margin over the ALP. This grew to over 6% in 2004, but dropped back to 2.6% in 2007.

Candidates

• Andy Huntley (Greens)
• Jean Robinson (Citizens Electoral Council)
• Wilson Tuckey (Liberal) – Member for O’Connor since 1980.
• Pat Scallan (Family First)
• Jacky Young (Christian Democratic Party)
• Tony Crook (Nationals)
• Geoffrey Stokes (Independent)
• Ian Bishop (Labor)
• Neil Smithson (Independent)

Political situation
At the 2007 election, the Liberal Party was threatened in O’Connor by the Nationals, and in Kalgoorlie by the ALP. The new seat of O’Connor is held by a much larger margin over the ALP, and should be much harder for the Nationals to overtake the Labor Party. The Liberal candidate should have no trouble winning the seat.

2007 result – O’Connor

2007 two-candidate-preferred result – O’Connor

2007 result – Kalgoorlie

2007 two-candidate-preferred result – Kalgoorlie

Booth breakdown
O’Connor covers a staggering 44 local government areas. Booths have been divided into five areas. “Goldfields” covers booths in the sparsely-populated north of the seat, and primarily includes booths in Kalgoorlie and neighbouring towns. South East covers booths centred on the town of Esperance, along the coast to the south of Kalgoorlie.

Wheatbelt covers those booths in the area closest to Perth. South West covers the smallest geographical area, in the corner of the seat to the south of Perth. About 40% of voters live in the ‘Great Southern’ area, which includes a large number of booths around Albany.

The Liberal Party won a margin of less than 52% in the Goldfields area, and won over 77% in the Wheatbelt. They won majorities between 61% and 65% in the other parts of the seat.

It is not possible to determine where votes were cast when they were cast away from ordinary polling booths, so the following table shows the ‘other votes’ for the old seats of O’Connor and Kalgoorlie.