TWO outgoing Mallee candidates have not ruled out running again and say any future challenge to The Nationals’ hold on the seat could come as voters shift away from the major parties.
Independent Mallee hopeful Sophie Baldwin said the political wind was changing and the election showed people were “looking outside” the major parties.
“If they’ve got decent independents – genuine people who are concerned about their communities, it’s only going to get more and more popular,” Ms Baldwin said.
“Anne Webster might be in for a hard run for the next three years with there being a Labor government and (at the next election) people might be rethinking about party politics.”
Dr Webster recorded 49.82 per cent of the primary vote after 97 out of 99 booths were counted. While Labor’s Carole Hart had 16.17 per cent of the vote to poll second, Ms Baldwin received just under 10 per cent of the total vote.
“For the small budget that we had, to get eight and a half thousand votes (8493) in basically a four-month campaign for one person, and not a party, that’s pretty damn good,” Ms Baldwin said.
While she was not sure whether she would contest the next election, Ms Baldwin said “150 people” had told her to run again in Mallee.
United Australia Party hopeful Stuart King said the results proved Mallee was still a safe seat, he was unsure why.
“The results prove how safe the seat is,” Mr King said. “Whether that’s because people necessarily like The Nationals … or because it was a smaller field of candidates and they felt they had less choice, I’m not sure.
“To think about going again … I’d have to look at the best way to go about it. Is a minor party the right way to go or would it have been better to run as an independent?”
Mr King polled just behind Baldwin with 9.66 per cent (8230) votes when counting stopped on Saturday evening. He drew greater support in Swan Hill, but underperformed in Horsham, which was the second-biggest polling area by number of votes.
He said if he were to run for the federal election again, he would prefer to spend two years building his profile “everywhere as we possibly could”, but would first “normalise back into society”.
