Electoral district of Perth

Infobox Australian Electorate
name = Perth
state = wa


caption =
lifespan = 1890–1950, 1962–present
mp = John Hyde
mp-party = Labor
namesake = Perth
area = 20.9
class = North Metropolitan

The Electoral district of Perth is a Legislative Assembly electorate in the state of Western Australia. Perth is named for the capital city of Western Australia whose central business district falls within its borders. It is one of the oldest electorates in Western Australia, with its first member having been elected in the inaugural 1890 elections of the Legislative Assembly. It is currently regarded as a safe seat for the Australian Labor Party, which has held it consistently since the 1968 election. The present Member, John Hyde, was first elected in the 2001 election.

Geography

Perth is bounded by the Swan River to the south and southeast, Mitchell Freeway and Thomas Street to the west, Green Street to the north, and Walcott Street to the northeast. Its boundaries include the suburbs of East Perth, Highgate, Leederville, Mount Hawthorn, [This includes a section formerly part of Glendalough which merged with Mount Hawthorn in 2007. See cite web|url=http://www.vincent.wa.gov.au/cproot/1815/16417/Glendalough%20Name%20Change.pdf|title=Media release - What's in a name?|author=Town of Vincent|date=1 March 2007|accessdate=2008-01-12] Northbridge, North Perth, Perth and West Perth along with part of Mount Lawley southwest of Walcott Street. [cite web|url=http://www.boundarieswa.com/2007/Final-Boundaries/Metropolitan-Area/--North-Metropolitan-/|title=2007 Electoral Distribution - Final Boundaries - Metropolitan Area - North Metropolitan Region|author=Western Australian Electoral Commission|date=29 October 2007|accessdate=2008-01-12] Major features inside the electorate include Perth's central business district, Kings Park, the East Perth redevelopment precinct and Hyde Park.

The 2007 redistribution, which came into effect at the 2008 election, removed Menora and parts of Mount Lawley northeast of Walcott Street, while including all of West Perth as well as Kings Park. [cite web|url=http://www.boundarieswa.com/2003/Boundaries/North-Metropolitan/Perth/|title=2003 Electoral Distribution - Final Boundaries - - North Metropolitan - Perth|author=Western Australian Electoral Commission|date=4 August 2003|accessdate=2008-01-12]

Historically, the boundaries included a much smaller area. In 1911, it only covered the central business district and Northbridge, and in 1929, a section between Newcastle and Bulwer Streets was added. When it was recreated from parts of the abolished West Perth and East Perth districts at the 1961 redistribution,Gazette WA
title = Electoral Districts Act 1947-1955 - Order in Council
page = 1961:3651-3702
date = 14 December 1961] the Perth electorate included all of West Perth and part of Kings Park, but its northern boundary only extended to Vincent Street, Hyde Park and the East Perth railway station. The 1972 redistribution [Gazette WA
title = Electoral Districts Act 1947-1965 - Order in Council
page = 1972:1833-1893
date = 14 June 1972] added part of West Leederville east of Kimberley Street, and extended the northern boundary to include southern Leederville and parts of North Perth and Mount Lawley. By 1982, it extended to Walcott Street, and the 1994 redistribution saw it take its present shape. [Gazette WA
title = Electoral Distributions Act 1947 - Division of the State into Six Electoral Regions and 57 Electoral Districts by the Electoral Distribution Commissioners
page = 1994:6135-6327
date = 28 November 1994]

History

The electoral district of Perth was created as one of the initial 30 single-member districts, and one of only six in the Perth-Fremantle area, [cite book |title = A New History of Western Australia |last=de Garis |first=Brian |editor = Stannage, C.T. |year= 1981 |publisher= University of Western Australia Press |location=Nedlands |isbn=0-85564-170-3 |chapter = Self-government and the evolution of party politics |pages= 336] and its first member, elected on 10 December 1890, was Dr Edward Scott, a doctor by training who had been elected as Mayor of Perth the previous year. He resigned in December 1891, and was replaced at the resulting by-election on 12 January 1892 by Thomas Molloy. Molloy became embroiled in a controversy regarding provision of state aid to private schools, which he and fellow Catholic MLAs Timothy Quinlan and Marinus Canning supported. The Catholic Vicar General, Father Anselm Bourke, established the Education Defence League with their assistance. However, the issue became a major one in the 1894 election amongst the voting public, and all three MLAs lost their seats, Molloy losing to George Randell, a prominent Congregationalist who had led the cause against state aid.de Garis, p.342-343.] Randell became the Opposition Leader to Premier John Forrest, but stepped down from that role a year later in July 1895, and did not contest the 1897 election, which was won by a supporter of Forrest.

In the 1901 election, after which the Oppositionists under George Leake were able to form a minority government, Frank Wilson, formerly the member for Canning, won the seat. After five months, the Leake government failed, and the Governor eventually invited Alf Morgans of the Ministerial party to form a government and appoint a six-member Ministry. Morgans appointed Wilson minister of mines and commissioner of railways on 21 November 1901. Until 1947, members of parliament who were appointed as ministers were required to resign their seat and recontest it at a ministerial by-election, which was normally a fairly non-eventful matter. [Black, D., in Stannage, p.390.] However, Leake and his allies contested the six by-elections with such organised campaigning that three of the six ministers, including Wilson, were defeated. [de Garis, p.348. * Australian Dictionary of Biography|last=de Garis|first= Brian|year= 1986 |id=A100035b |title=Leake, George (1856 - 1902)|accessdate= 2008-01-14 * Dates from cite book|last=Black|first=David|coauthors=Prescott, Valerie|title=Election statistics, Legislative Assembly of Western Australia, 1890-1996|year=1997|publisher=Parliamentary History Project and Western Australian Electoral Commission|location=Perth|id=ISBN 0-7309-8409-5]

In 1911, the seat was won for the first time for the Australian Labor Party by Walter Dwyer, a lawyer who helped to draft the Industrial Arbitration Act 1912 during the first Scaddan administration; however, he was defeated by James Connolly of the new Liberal Party in 1914. Connolly became a minister without portfolio in the new Wilson government but resigned in June 1917 when appointed to the role of Agent General for Western Australia. Robert Pilkington won the subsequent by-election on 21 July 1917 and election two months later, before leaving for England in 1921, and Harry Mann, a former detective who, amongst other things, oversaw gaming and racing, was elected in his place.

A controversy erupted in 1933 upon the establishment of a Lotteries Commission, to which Mann, along with John Scaddan and Legislative Council member Alec Clydesdale, were appointed. Several profitable newspaper competitions, including that of "The Sunday Times", were prohibited. In response, a Citizens' Reform League was formed to defend the crosswords, and at the elections later that year, both Mann and Scaddan lost their seats [Black, p.422. Also see cite book|last=Bolton|first=Geoffrey|title=A fine country to starve in|publisher=University of Western Australia Press|year=1972|isbn=0-8556406-1-8|pages=244-246] —with Perth being won by former Labor Senator Ted Needham, who was to hold the seat until its abolition at the 1950 election, and North Perth for the following three years until his retirement. [Black and Bolton 2001] One sideline to Needham's campaigns was watchmaker and jeweller William Murray, who had placed a public notice in "The West Australian" on 28 October 1930 stating that Parliament "has become an out-of-date instrument for achieving the will of Anglo-Saxon peoples" and seeking names and addresses of anyone wishing to work towards overthrowing it—and then ran for election as a Nationalist in 1936 and 1943. [cite book |title = The house on the hill: A history of the Parliament of Western Australia 1832-1990 |last=Bolton |first=Geoffrey |editor = Black, David |year= 1991 |publisher= Parliament of Western Australia |location=West Perth |isbn=0-7309398-3-9 |chapter = Good name of Parliament |pages= 482]

The seat was re-established at the 1962 election with different boundaries—the neighbouring seats of West Perth, East Perth and North Perth having all been abolished in the 1961 redistribution—and was won by Labor's Stanley Heal, the previous member for West Perth. He was defeated at the 1965 election by Peter Durack of the Liberal Party, who was in turn defeated by Terry Burke in 1968.cite book|last=Black|first=David|coauthors=Prescott, Valerie|title=Election statistics, Legislative Assembly of Western Australia, 1890-1996|year=1997|publisher=Parliamentary History Project and Western Australian Electoral Commission|location=Perth|id=ISBN 0-7309-8409-5] Burke, the brother of Brian Burke who went on to serve as Premier from 1983 until 1988, went on to hold the seat for 19 years until 1987.

Burke resigned in 1987, and Labor's Dr Ian Alexander, a City of Perth councillor and town planner from the party's left faction, won the subsequent by-election on 9 May 1987. He spent much of his parliamentary time on Aboriginal issues, sustainability and the environment and the Northern Suburbs Transit System project. On 4 March 1991, Ian Alexander resigned from the Labor party citing "frequent breaches of the party's basic principles and platforms", and sat as an independent until the 1993 election. [cite news|title=WA's Labor sinks towards minority government|last=Humphries|first=David|date=6 March 1991|work=The Age|page=6 cite news|title=Labor in trouble in the West|date=6 March 1991|work=Sydney Morning Herald|page=14] Dr Alexander did not stand for election in 1993, and Labor's Diana Warnock, a former radio talk-show host, won the seat with 50.29% of the two-party-preferred vote against the Liberals' Hal G.P. Colebatch.

The seat is now held by John Hyde, a former mayor of the Town of Vincent and a prominent gay activist.

Members for Perth

Results

Election box begin
title=State Election 2005: PerthElection box candidate AU party
candidate = John Hyde
party = Labor
votes = 11,303
percentage = 49.07
change = +3.44

Election box candidate AU party
candidate = David Lagan
party = Liberal
votes = 7,596
percentage = 32.97
change = +0.91

Election box candidate AU party
candidate = Damian Douglas-Meyer
party = Greens
votes = 2,982
percentage = 12.94
change = +1.94

Election box candidate AU party
candidate = Gus Loh
party = Christian Democrats
votes = 594
percentage = 2.58
change = +2.58

Election box candidate AU party
candidate = Don Hyland
party = Independent
votes = 375
percentage = 1.63
change = +1.63

Election box candidate AU party
candidate = Marie Edmonds
party = One Nation
votes = 186
percentage = 0.81
change = -3.34

Election box formal
votes = 23,036
percentage = 94.89
change = +0.82

Election box informal
votes = 1,240
percentage = 5.11
change = -0.82

Election box turnout
votes = 24,276
percentage = 87.78
change = +0.53

Election box candidate AU party
party = Labor
candidate = John Hyde
votes = 14,287
percentage = 62.04
change = +0.78

Election box candidate AU party
party = Liberal
candidate = David Lagan
votes = 8,741
percentage = 37.96
change = -0.78

Election box hold AU party
winner = Labor
swing = 0.78

References

External links

* [http://www.abc.net.au/elections/wa/2005/guide/pert.htm Electorate Profile] (Antony Green, ABC)