Result 20 years in making for ALP

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This was published 13 years ago

Result 20 years in making for ALP

By Gary Tippet

AFTER two decades, the ALP finally retook the sprawling Dandenongs-based seat of La Trobe last night.

It was a ''mammoth'' and ''mind-blowing'' moment, new member Laura Smyth told cheering supporters - but in the next breath she urged caution about claiming victory. Which was why she was celebrating with beer and not champagne.

Ms Smyth, 34, arrived at the Upwey RSL 10 minutes after the ABC called the seat with a 1.4 per cent swing about 8.40pm. It was previously poised on a knife-edge 0.5 per cent margin.

''It's just an absolute delight to be in this position. I would have said this was eight months in the making but on reflection I do have to say it's 20 years,'' she said.

Ms Smyth arrived with her mother, Mary, who was celebrating her 68th birthday. ''After all her hard work this is the best present ever. I'm absolutely over the moon, delighted, thrilled,'' Mary said.

The big picture, though, was looking increasingly gloomy, with a possible hung parliament or Coalition victory in the offing.

''It's going to keep me more accountable, but it only makes me more determined,'' Ms Smyth said.

An ALP member since she was 16, Ms Smyth has a touch of Julia Gillard about her.

She came to Australia from Belfast with her parents, Eddie and Mary, and older sister, Deborah, in 1983, cut her political teeth as Victorian president of the Australian Union of Students, then followed with a career in the law.

La Trobe - a seat the government needed to take to fight off the expected disasters in NSW and Queensland - is a Y-shaped electorate surrounding Cardinia Reservoir, running into the Dandenongs with its base in the housing estates around Narre Warren North and Pakenham. According to politics lecturer Nick Economou, it is the Victorian equivalent of the western suburbs of Sydney, with voters worried about a ''Big Australia''.

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Ms Smyth disagreed: ''I don't think there's anxiety about that. People here are interested in what comes next for their local community - infrastructure, educational opportunities, access to universities and TAFE.''

Earlier yesterday, at a booth in Ferntree Gully, a Liberal volunteer baited one of her colleagues: ''What's your boss's background? CFMEU? AMWU?''

No, she's a commercial lawyer, he answered, what about you? ''I'm in shipping.''

''Well, Abbott will be bad for you,'' countered the ALP guy, ''He's gonna stop the boats.''

The ousted member, former policeman Jason Wood, was not commenting late last night - on orders from his media minder.

On Friday she told The Sunday Age: ''Look, tomorrow I'm going to be keeping Jason away from media … it's basically our last day out there and I need Jason to be fully concentrating on just being with the local community … I think tomorrow I've really got to keep him focused.''

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