IND 0.5% vs LIB
Incumbent MP
Don Pegler, since 2010.
Geography
South-eastern corner of South Australia. Mount Gambier covers the Mount Gambier and Grant local government areas. Most of the population lies within the town of Mount Gambier.
Redistribution
Mount Gambier previously covered a small part of Wattle Grove council area, which was transferred to MacKillop, making the electorate’s boundaries coterminous with those of Grant local government area, and increasing Pegler’s margin from 0.4% to 0.5%.
History
The electorate of Mount Gambier has existed continuously since 1938, although the seat changed name to Gordon from 1993 to 2002. The seat has been represented by three independent MPs, and apart from those was held by the ALP prior to 1975 and by the Liberal Party after that date.
Independent MP John Fletcher held the seat for twenty years, from 1938 to 1958.
Labor MP Ron Ralston held the seat from 1958 to 1962, followed by Labor MP Allan Burdon from 1962 to 1975.
Harold Allison was the seat’s only Liberal MP, holding the seat for eighteen years from 1975 to 1993, and then held the renamed electorate of Gordon for one more term, until 1997.
Allison retired in 1997, and Scott Dixon defeated Mount Gambier council chairman Rory McEwen for Liberal preselection. McEwen ran as an independent, and narrowly overtook the ALP for second place on primary votes, and then narrowly defeated Dixon on Labor preferences.
McEwen easily won re-election at the 2002 election, with the electorate renamed from Gordon back to Mount Gambier. He did not support the Labor government immediately after the election, but in November 2002 accepted a new ministerial position in the Labor-led minority government.
McEwen won re-election in 2006 with a reduced margin, and again joined the ministry in the Rann government, despite the ALP holding a comfortable majority in the House of Assembly.
McEwen resigned from the ministry in 2009, and retired at the 2010 election.
At the 2010 election, the contest was between the two mayors covering the electorate: Liberal candidate and Mount Gambier mayor Steve Perryman and independent candidate and Grant mayor Don Pegler.
Pegler narrowly won, defeating Perryman by 161 votes after preferences, despite Perryman leading by 6.6% on primary votes.
Candidates
Sitting independent MP Don Pegler is running for re-election. The Liberal Party is running Troy Bell. The Greens are running John Baseley. Family First are running Peter Heaven.
- Peter Heaven (Family First)
- Don Pegler (Independent)
- Troy Bell (Liberal)
- Jim Maher (Labor)
- John Baseley (Greens)
Assessment
Mount Gambier is a very hard race to assess. Pegler holds the seat with a very narrow margin, but as a first-term MP has presumably built up some personal vote in the majority of the seat where he did not already serve as mayor.
On the other hand, the Liberal Party is resurgent in South Australia, so it is very difficult to say.
2010 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Steve Perryman | LIB | 9,282 | 42.6 | +8.7 |
| Don Pegler | IND | 7,842 | 36.0 | +36.0 |
| Viv Maher | ALP | 2,724 | 12.5 | -9.7 |
| Henk Bruins | FF | 929 | 4.3 | +0.2 |
| Donella Peters | GRN | 492 | 2.3 | +0.4 |
| Nick Fletcher | IND | 464 | 2.1 | +2.1 |
| John Desyllas | FLT | 48 | 0.2 | +0.2 |
2010 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Don Pegler | IND | 10,971 | 50.4 | -5.8 |
| Steve Perryman | LIB | 10,810 | 49.6 | +5.8 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into three areas. A large majority of the electorate’s population lies in the Mount Gambier urban area, which matches the local government boundaries. These booths have been split into east and west. The remainder of the electorate, covering approximately a quarter of the population but the vast majority of the land mass, has been grouped as Grant.
Independent candidate Don Pegler won a two-candidate-preferred majority in all three areas, ranging from 50.6% in Mount Gambier East to 53.3% in Mount Gambier West.
The ALP came third in the race, with a vote around 13-15% in the two Mount Gambier areas, and 8.5% in Grant.
| Voter group | ALP % | IND 2CP % | Total votes | % of ordinary votes |
| Mt Gambier East | 13.46 | 50.58 | 7,714 | 46.54 |
| Grant | 8.47 | 52.68 | 4,522 | 27.28 |
| Mt Gambier West | 14.73 | 53.26 | 4,339 | 26.18 |
| Other votes | 12.22 | 45.00 | 4,296 |
The Liberals have some horrible luck with preselections here. Pegler ran for Lib preselection and didn’t get it, just like McEwen in 1997. McEwen got a 26.5% swing to him in his second election (which wasn’t a huge change from 1997, producing SA’s second minority govt in a row), so I’d expect a swing to Pegler here as well unless things have gone wrong for him locally.
My prediction: Very narrow margin, although independents have a history of doing better at their second election. Will be very dependent on local issues and Pegler’s popularity as an incumbent MP.
Labor does the hard yards giving pref to ind, Maher is a true honest local who deserves a go!
The Liberals should win this seat easily. Even if Pegler has built up his popularity in the electorate over the years, his margin is way too small to fend off the Liberals. Moreover, I suspect that he might be subjected to the same Liberal trickery used against Independents across the country, namely the argument that a vote for an Independent is effectively a vote for Labor, however untrue it is – ever since Independents from supposedly conservative electorates chose to support Labor in the hung Federal parliament of 2010, the Liberals and their allies have relentlessly engaged in this trickery against Independents, and even though they’re now in power at Federal level, they’re still brooding over their 2010 near-miss. But even without this trickery, Pegler would probably still lose to the Liberals here.