ONE sobering conclusion to draw from Saturday night’s federal election result is that the Labor brand is bordering on irrelevance in Calare.
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While candidate Jess Jennings has already indicated he plans to run again for the party at the next federal election, that’s more a credit to his belief in the process than real belief he can win.
Right across the country there are candidates like Dr Jennings who deserve our greatest admiration, those candidates who contest safe seats as rank outsiders because they have a passion for their party and politics.
Notwithstaning, it now seems only a major boundary change could ever deliver Calare to the Labor Party.
While Dr Jennings polled quite strongly in the eastern reaches of the electorate around Bathurst and Lithgow, it was a much different story the further west you went.
Even areas where anger over the state Coalition’s forced council amalgamations was expected to deliver a protest vote against the Nationals largely stayed loyal to the conservatives.
The two Wellington branches – where locals remain angry about being forced to merge with Dubbo – still delivered close to 50 per cent of primary votes to Andrew Gee and he won both booths comfortably on preferences.
In Oberon, where the anger is perhaps the most fierce, the Nationals’ primary vote was dramatically down from 65 per cent to 42 per cent, but even there Dr Jennings only managed 30 per cent of primaries for Labor.
Recent state elections also suggest Labor’s primary vote across Calare is stuck around the 25 per cent mark.
In Bathurst in 2011, Labor candidate Dale Turner picked up 21 per cent of primary votes across the electorate and while Cassandra Coleman did slightly better in 2015 with 27 per cent, that is still a low starting point.
Predictably, the picture is even worse in Orange.
In 2011, Kevin Duffy picked up just 15 per cent of primary votes for Labor and Bernard Fitzsimon managed 23 per cent in 2015.
They are dire results in a region of NSW that produced such Labor giants as Ben Chifley and Tony Luchetti and say more about the voters than they do about the candidates.
It’s a long way back for Labor in Calare, and the road just looks to long.
