A by-election occurred in the South Australian House of Assembly seat of Ramsay on 11 February 2012. The seat was won by Labor candidate Zoe Bettison. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of former Premier and state Labor MHA Mike Rann.[1]
Rann and Kevin Foley resigned from their parliamentary seats, which created twin by-elections for 11 February, the other being the 2012 Port Adelaide by-election. On two-party preferred margins of 18.0 percent and 12.8 percent from the 2010 election, considered safe margins on the previous pendulum, Labor would have likely retained both seats on the two-party preferred vote based on unchanged statewide Newspoll since the previous election. Ramsay was the safest of Labor's seats based on the previous election. In the lower house, 24 seats form a majority, the Labor government held 26 of 47 seats. If one or both seats were lost, Labor would still have retained majority government.[2] [3] [4]
Rann was first elected as the member for the new northern metropolitan seat of Briggs at the 1985 election. From 1989 he held various ministries in the Bannon Labor government. Briggs was abolished in an electoral redistribution, with Rann moving to Ramsay in 1993. Rann was state Labor leader and leader of the opposition from 1994 after the Labor government was defeated a year earlier. Rann led Labor to minority government at the 2002 election, a landslide majority government at the 2006 election, and retained majority government at the 2010 election despite a swing. Rann stepped down in favour of Jay Weatherill as party leader and Premier in 2011. Rann is the third-longest-serving Premier of South Australia and longest-serving South Australian Labor leader, and afterward became the longest-serving period of South Australian Labor government in history.
The last by-election was the 2009 Frome by-election, when another former Premier, Rob Kerin, retired from politics. The seat was narrowly won by an independent candidate.
| Date | Event | |
|---|---|---|
| 13 January 2012 | Mike Rann resigned from the Parliament of South Australia.[5] | |
| 13 January 2012 | Writs were issued by the Speaker of the House of Assembly to proceed with a by-election. | |
| 23 January 2012 | Enrolment on electoral rolls closed, with a total of 22,330 voters enrolled for the by-election.[6] | |
| 27 January 2012 | Candidate nominations closed and ballot order draw occurred, in line with s60(a) of the Electoral Act 1985.[7] | |
| 11 February 2012 | Polling day occurred between the hours of 8am and 6pm. | |
| 27 February 2012 | Writ returned before this date for formal result declaration. |
| 7 candidates in ballot paper order[8] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent Voice of the Community | Mark Aldridge | Son of Salisbury Mayor. Contested seats in multiple recent federal and state elections as an independent, and 2007 for One Nation.[9] | |||
| SA Greens | Ruth Beach | Environmental, commercial and industrial lawyer, chair of an SA conservation NGO.[10] | |||
| Independent Trevor Grace Save the Unborn | Trevor Grace | Endorsed candidate of the unregistered anti-abortionist Save the Unborn Party, contested upper house in 2010, and for the Family First Party in 2006.[11] | |||
| Labor | Zoe Bettison | Former SDA organiser, NT Labor secretary and ministerial advisor, SA director of Hawker Britton. | |||
| One Nation | Chris Walsh | Plumber and partner of a horticultural business.[12] | |||
| FREE Australia | Mark Lena | Electrician and data cabler.[13] | |||
| Liberal Democrats | Christopher Steele | Owner and manager of advertising and audio businesses, wedding celebrant, contested federal seat of Adelaide in 2010. | |||
The Liberal Party, Family First Party, and the Australian Democrats, who contested the previous election and gained 24.9 percent, 9.6 percent, and 3.0 percent respectively, did not contest the by-election.[14]
One opinion poll was conducted and released by the in-house polling group at The Advertiser, Adelaide's main newspaper. On 30 January 2012, 410 voters were polled in the seat. After the Liberal Party declined to field a candidate, Labor's primary vote was at 51 percent (57.9 percent at the last election), with the LDP on 23 percent, Aldridge on 10 percent, the Greens on 9 percent (4.6 percent), with remaining candidates on about 7 percent collectively.[15]
Labor was expected to easily retain the seat.[16]
Labor retained the seat on a 66.7 percent two-candidate preferred vote against Aldridge, with a majority in all nine polling places – Ramsay remained the safest Labor seat in the parliament. Postal votes were included on 13 February, absentee and pre-poll votes were included on 14 February. Preference distributions occurred on 18 February. Results are final.[17] [18] [19] [20] [21]