The Ros Kelly saga will end on whiteboard on Saturday night when the results of the Canberra by-election come in. The Australian Electoral Commission does not set up a formal tally room for by-election, rather it faxes results to media organisations and for the public posts results during the evening on a whiteboard at the divisional office in Penrhyn House, Bowes Street, Woden.
The by-election has been caused by the resignation from Parliament of Labor’s Ros Kelly. Mrs Kelly has earlier been forced to resign from Cabinet as Environment Minister after the sports rorts affair during which she said that sports grants had been decided after information had been posted on a “”great big whiteboard” in her office. Was there any irony in the post of the by-election results? _ a firm no comment from the commission. The commission will be counting the votes of those of the 99,295 electors who cast their ballot on Saturday. The seat is held by Labor by 9.6 per cent. The table shows the two-party-preferred history of the seat since the 1977 election when it was just held by the Liberals. It ran to preferences in 1990, but it has none the less been a comfortable Labor seat for 16 years. There are no boundary changes since the 1993 election in the 421 sq km electorate. It takes in the following suburbs and the rural south of the ACT: Banks, Bonython, Calwell, Chapman, Chifley, Chisholm, Conder, Curtin, Deakin, Duffy, Fadden, Farrer, Fisher, Forrest, Fyshwick, Garran, Gilmore, Gordon, Gowrie, Greenway, Harman, Holder, Hughes, Hume, Isaacs, Isabella Plains, Kambah, Lyons, MacArthur, Mawson, Monash, Mt Stromlo, Oaks Estate, Oxley, Pearce, Phillip, Richardson, Rivett, Royalla, Stirling, Swinger Hill, Symonston, Tharwa, Theodore, Torrens, Uriarra, Wanniassa, Waramanga, Weston and Woden.
Next election the two ACT seats of Canberra and Fraser will be split into three _ Fraser will still be Belconnen-based; the new seat of Namadgi will be Tuggeranong-based and Canberra will be in the centre. This time the candidates are Sue Robinson, Labor; Brendan Smyth, Liberal; James Warden, Greens; Joseph Cotta, Republican Party of Australia; Robyn Spencer, Australians Against Further Immigration; Jerzy Gray-Grzeszkiewicz, Independent; Joanne Clarke, Independent. Polls close at 6pm. Unless the result is very close the result is expected well before 10pm because the commission provides a two-party-preferred count with notional distribution of preferences during the count. The commission did this last election for the first time and it resulted in the bulk of seats being known by 10pm and all but a few very close seats by the end of counting on the night, usually around 11pm. If the result is very close it could depend on postal votes, in which case ase it will not be known till next week.
A full coverage of the by-election in addition to the NSW election _ including analysis and reaction _ will appear in The Canberra Times on Sunday. For home delivery ring 2802222. ABC-TV, WIN and Capital will run NSW election coverage throughout the evening during which there will be by-election updates. WIN will do hourly updates (roughly on the hour) on the by-election and the four NSW seats that surround the ACT. Prime will do a 20 minute NSW election and ACT by-election update at half-time in the AFL game around 8.45pm. Radio will update in news bulletins.