Albury
Margin: Liberal 27.1%
Region: Southern Regional
Federal: Farrer (95%)/Riverina (5%)
Candidates in ballot paper order
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ROSS JACKSON KYM WADE JOHN MARRA GREG APLIN NILOUFER KING |
2011 BOOTH RESULTS MAP |
PAST RESULTS |
DEMOGRAPHICS |
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Two-party preferred booth results from 2011 state election showing Liberal majority in blue and Labor in red. New boundaries in thicker blue lines, old ones in thinner red lines. Boundary data courtesy of Ben Raue of The Tally Room.
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Albury is a safe Liberal seat encompassing the Murray River border city that bears its name, along with the shires of Greater Hume immediately to its north, Corowa further to the west, and Tumbarumba in the east. The redistribution further adds the shires of Jerilderie and Urana to north of Corowa, adding 1975 new voters with a negligible effect on the margin.
In an uninterrupted history going back to 1880, Albury was only held by Labor for two brief periods until Harold Mair’s win in the 1978 “Wranslide”. Mair held the seat until the defeat of the Unsworth government at the 1988 election, when a particularly forceful swing of 13.8% was attributed to rural hostility to more restrictive gun laws. Labor’s fortunes declined as reductions in the size of parliament forced the electorate into more conservative rural territory, although independent candidate Claire Douglas came within 1.0% of unseating Liberal member Ian Glachan in 1999.
Glachan retired in 2003 and was succeeded by Greg Aplin, who had worked locally as a television station manager and university administrator. Aplin was born in Zambia and served as a Rhodesian diplomat and Zimbabwean government official after independence in 1980, before moving to Australia in 1981. He served in the shadow ministry from 2006, but was overlooked for a cabinet post after the 2011 election victory, despite Barry O’Farrell’s state intention pre-election to retain his front-bench line-up in government.