Electorate: Schubert

Margin: Liberal 17.8%
Region: Rural Central Districts
Federal: Barker/Mayo/Wakefield
Outgoing member: Ivan Venning (Liberal)
Click here for electoral boundaries map

The candidates

To be vacated at the election by Ivan Venning after 24 years as a Liberal MP, Schubert covers the Barossa Valley and its population centres of Nuriootpa, Tanunda and Angaston, together with further territory to the south and east. The southern part of the electorate includes the towns of Mount Pleasant and Springton on the B10, while in the east it extends through Angas Valley to the Murray River at Marks Landing and Walker Flat. Liberal margins have generally been well into the double digits, although it was reduced to 6.4% at the 2006 election. The electorate has been unaffected by the redistribution.

Schubert was created at the 1997 election in place of abolished Custance, the name change reflecting the loss of territories further north including the Clare Valley. Ivan Venning, whose father Howard Venning was the Liberal member for Rocky River from 1968 to 1979, was member for Custance and then Schubert from 1990. Associated with the Right faction, he held the shadow portfolios of ageing and population from July 2009 until the 2010 election, but otherwise spent his career on the back bench. Venning’s successor as Liberal candidate is Stephan Knoll, manager of Barossa Fine Foods. A decision by the party’s state executive to reopen nominations for the seat in November 2012 was interpreted as a move to keep an option open for Alexander Downer, but such talk was scotched after Steven Marshall assumed the leadership.

All post-redistribution margins are as calculated by Jenni Newton-Farrelly of the South Australian Parliamentary Library. Corrections, complaints and feedback to William Bowe at pollbludger-at-bigpond-dot-com. Read William’s blog, The Poll Bludger.

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