Electoral district of Perth

All you want to know about Electoral district of Perth

Perth Western Australia—Legislative Assembly
State or territory:	Western Australia
Dates current:	1890–1950, 1962–present
MP:	John Hyde
Party:	Labor
Namesake:	Perth
Area:	20.9 km² (8.1 sq mi)
Demographic:	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.

1 Geography
2 History
3 Members for Perth
4 Results
5 References
6 External links

Geography

Boundaries of Perth, 1962–2005.

Map showing 2005 boundaries and changes at the 2007 redistribution.

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,^[1] Northbridge, North Perth, Perth and West Perth along with part of Mount Lawley southwest of Walcott Street.^[2] 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.^[3]

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,^[4] 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^[5] 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.^[6]

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,^[7] 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.^[8] 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.^[8]

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.^[9] However, Leake and his allies contested the six by-elections with such organised campaigning that three of the six ministers, including Wilson, were defeated.^[10]

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^[11]—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.^[12] 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.^[13]

The seat was re-established at the 1962 election with different boundaries^[4]—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.^[14] 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.^[15] 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

First incarnation (1890–1950)
Member		Party	Term
	Edward Scott	Non-aligned	1890–1892
	Thomas Molloy	Non-aligned	1892–1894
	George Randell	Oppositionist	1894–1897
	Lyall Hall	Ministerialist	1897–1901
	Frank Wilson	Ministerialist	1901
	William Purkiss	Oppositionist	1901–1904
	Harry Brown	Ministerialist	1904–1911
	Sir Walter Dwyer	Labor	1911–1914
	Sir James Connolly	Liberal	1914–1917
	Robert Pilkington	Nationalist	1917–1921
	Harry Mann	Nationalist	1921–1933
	Ted Needham	Labor	1933–1950

Second incarnation (1961–present)
Member		Party	Term
	Stanley Heal	Labor	1962–1965
	Peter Durack	Liberal	1965–1968
	Terry Burke	Labor	1968–1987
	Dr Ian Alexander	Labor	1987–1991
	Dr Ian Alexander	Independent	1991–1993
	Diana Warnock	Labor	1993–2001
	John Hyde	Labor	2001–present

Results

Main article: Results for the Electoral district of Perth

State Election 2005: Perth
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	John Hyde	11,303	49.07	+3.44
	Liberal	David Lagan	7,596	32.97	+0.91
	Greens	Damian Douglas-Meyer	2,982	12.94	+1.94
	Christian Democrats	Gus Loh	594	2.58	+2.58
	Independent	Don Hyland	375	1.63	+1.63
	One Nation	Marie Edmonds	186	0.81	-3.34
Total formal votes			23,036	94.89	+0.82
Informal votes			1,240	5.11	-0.82
Turnout			24,276	87.78	+0.53
Two Candidate Preferred Result
	Labor	John Hyde	14,287	62.04	+0.78
	Liberal	David Lagan	8,741	37.96	-0.78
	Labor hold		Swing	0.78

References

^ This includes a section formerly part of Glendalough which merged with Mount Hawthorn in 2007. See Town of Vincent (1 March 2007). "Media release - What's in a name?". Retrieved on 2008-01-12.
^ Western Australian Electoral Commission (29 October 2007). "2007 Electoral Distribution - Final Boundaries - Metropolitan Area - North Metropolitan Region". Retrieved on 2008-01-12.
^ Western Australian Electoral Commission (4 August 2003). "2003 Electoral Distribution - Final Boundaries - - North Metropolitan - Perth". Retrieved on 2008-01-12.
^ ^a ^b "Electoral Districts Act 1947-1955 - Order in Council", Western Australia Government Gazette (14 December 1961), p. 1961:3651-3702.
^ "Electoral Districts Act 1947-1965 - Order in Council", Western Australia Government Gazette (14 June 1972), p. 1972:1833-1893.
^ "Electoral Distributions Act 1947 - Division of the State into Six Electoral Regions and 57 Electoral Districts by the Electoral Distribution Commissioners", Western Australia Government Gazette (28 November 1994), p. 1994:6135-6327.
^ de Garis, Brian (1981). "Self-government and the evolution of party politics", in Stannage, C.T.: A New History of Western Australia. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 336. ISBN 0-85564-170-3.
^ ^a ^b de Garis, p.342-343.
^ Black, D., in Stannage, p.390.
^ de Garis, p.348.
* de Garis, Brian (1986). "Leake, George (1856 - 1902)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University. Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
* Dates from Black, David; Prescott, Valerie (1997). Election statistics, Legislative Assembly of Western Australia, 1890-1996. Perth: Parliamentary History Project and Western Australian Electoral Commission. ISBN 0-7309-8409-5.
^ Black, p.422. Also see Bolton, Geoffrey (1972). A fine country to starve in. University of Western Australia Press, 244-246. ISBN 0-8556406-1-8.
^ Black, David and Bolton, Geoffrey (2001). Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia, Volume One, 1870–1930, Revised Edition, Parliament House: Parliament of Western Australia. ISBN 0730738140.
^ Bolton, Geoffrey (1991). "Good name of Parliament", in Black, David: The house on the hill: A history of the Parliament of Western Australia 1832-1990. West Perth: Parliament of Western Australia, 482. ISBN 0-7309398-3-9.
^ Black, David; Prescott, Valerie (1997). Election statistics, Legislative Assembly of Western Australia, 1890-1996. Perth: Parliamentary History Project and Western Australian Electoral Commission. ISBN 0-7309-8409-5.
^ Humphries, David (6 March 1991). "WA's Labor sinks towards minority government", The Age, p. 6.
"Labor in trouble in the West", Sydney Morning Herald (6 March 1991), p. 14.