Collie-Wellington is an Electoral district of Western Australia. As in other districts, the Collie-Wellington district elects a single person to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly. The elected person is then known as the Member for Collie-Wellington, and is said to hold the seat of Collie-Wellington. As of 2001, the Member for Collie-Wellington is Mick Murray who holds the seat for the Labor Party by a margin of 9.3%. The seat in 2009 is expected to be retained by the Labor Party.
Profile
South west electorate of 4,724 km² including much of the coast between Mandurah and Bunbury. The electorate's main centres are Collie, Waronna, Yarloop, Harvey, Brunswick Junction, Burekup and Dardanup.
History
The seat has a new name, its core is still the regional town of Collie in the state's South West. Held by the Labor Party from 1908 to 1989, Collie had only three sitting members in those eight decades. The state's only significant coal mining centre, the Labor vote in Collie began to slip in the 1980s, with the redistribution ahead of 1989 election sealing Labor's fate by incorporating several rural shires into the electorate. However it was a surprise when the National Party's Hilda Turnbull won the seat rather than the Liberal Party. Remaining a marginal seat through the 1990s, both Labor and Coalition governments heaped largess on the district, most notably the economically and environmentally questionable decision to build a new base load coal fired power station in Collie. At the time the state appeared to be awash with gas from the north-west shelf that could have provided cheaper and cleaner power, but given the gas supply problems of the last few summers, perhaps coal was the right option. Collie was the final seat decided for Labor in 2001, gained by Labor's Mick Murray at his third attempt, but with a tiny majority of 34 votes. It is quite likely that Labor's victory owed much to the 'donkey' vote. One in five Green voters gave second preference to One Nation, around 170 votes that then flowed down the ballot paper to the third placed Labor candidate. Even if only half of those votes were real 'donkey' votes, it represents the difference between Murray's victory and possible defeat.
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