At the moment, the ALP can expect to win a swag of seats in Queensland and South Australia, and pick up a bunch in the South-Eastern states. But they can also expect to lose seats in Western Australia, the only state where the Coalition is still ahead in the polls.
The wafer-thin seats of Swan and Cowan will switch back to the Liberals with little else but a hiccup, but the seat that the ALP cannot afford to ignore is that of Brand.
Brand has been held by Labor since 1984, first by Wendy Fatin, and by Kim Beazley since 1996. Beazley shifted electorates from Swan when the margins were a little too uncomfortable for the then Deputy Prime Minister. Swan is now being held by the ALP by 104 votes, the first to switch if Labor can’t improve polling in WA.
Brand has a margin of 4.7%, but as an Opposition Leader for most of the last decade, Beazley is expected to have a considerable personal vote. His retirement could only send the seat the way of the Liberal Party’s Phil Edman, who had a 15% swing his direction with the 2004 primary vote.
Labor has endorsed former ALP secretary Gary Gray in the seat, who was the centre of Paul Keating’s now infamous attack on Lateline. Perhaps revenge for Gray nicknaming him ‘Captain Wacky’.
Coupled with the disaster that was the Brian Burke scandal, Labor will suffer in Western Australia, and their hold on Brand is particularly tenuous.
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Hi Nick,
Nice work on your political blog mate.
I think you're right about Brand being a difficult seat for Labor to hold onto given the retirement of Kim Beazley.
Seats are always tightly contested when the candidates from both major parties are new. Add in the idiosyncrasies of Brand and you have a very interesting spectacle.
Phil Edman has two main advantages. Edman successfully ran for a position on the local city council after his defeat at the 2004 Federal election. Since then Edman has been able to position himself as the city’s envoy to Canberra, using his Federal Liberal Party contacts to lobby on behalf of the city council for Federal Government funding. Edman’s second advantage is that he has been able to use his position on the city council as leverage for maintaining his profile in the community as the Federal Liberal candidate.
Gary Gray has three main advantages. Gray’s position as a former National Secretary of the Labor Party demonstrates a proven ability to act on the national level and it is also a tick in the box for many Labor supporters who might have otherwise been lured by an alternative candidate given that the incumbent member is not running for re-election. Secondly, Gray’s successful stint as an executive director at Woodside enables him to cut across political lines and communicate with constituencies that may not have traditionally voted Labor. In short Gray can do business speak and he probably has better business credentials than the Liberal candidate. Lastly, Gray has Beazley’s endorsement as the next member for Brand which is an important edge over Edman, given the high esteem in which the community holds Beazley.
However, I don’t think that the Brian Burke affair will be a major issue either in this seat or others during the Federal election. The State Labor Government recently faced a by-election in the seat of Peel due to fall out from the Burke affair. The seat of Peel falls within the Federal seat of Brand. There was a 1% swing towards Labor on two party preferred basis in that by-election held on 3 February 2007. Mind you both parties took a hit in their primary vote but the Liberals went further backwards than Labor.
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