Fran slams poll

By Gabrielle Costa
FUMING Fran Bailey has slammed the election count in her seat and has come up with nine reasons why there should be a third recount.
The twist in the knife-edge competition comes the day after it was revealed she had lost her McEwen seat by just seven votes after a fortnight-long count.
Yesterday (Monday) news that electoral officials had “found” another two votes, one in Ms Bailey’s favour, the other in the Labor candidate’s favour, was described as both “extraordinary” and “appalling” by the former tourism minister who said it was typical of a raft of inconsistencies and further evidence of the need for a recount in McEwen.
Among nine concerns Ms Bailey had already sent through to the AEC to do with the count are a lack of security over ballot papers, differences in the scrutineers’ counts to that of the AEC, missing ballot papers, claims of inconsistent rulings by the DRO (division returning officer) on the formality of ballot papers, counts taken without Liberal scrutineers present, incorrect reporting and transposition errors, acceptance of non-AEC ballot paper without AEC verification and absentee votes which she says don’t add up.
“I have always represented marginal seats and I have never seen anything like the inconsistencies exhibited throughout the last two weeks,” Ms Bailey said.
She said the difference in absentee votes with more than 8600 in McEwen compared to the state average of well below 5000 was a huge anomaly.
“McEwen has never had an absentee rate of anything like that,” Ms Bailey said.
Ms Bailey said while she is still behind in the count, it was of paramount importance that everyone had faith in the system.
Labor’s Rob Mitchell, meanwhile, has stopped short of claiming the seat, saying he would wait until the poll was officially declared by the AEC. The commission was planning to recheck a small number of votes on Monday.
With all votes counted and preferences distributed, the result was 50 per cent to each of the two major party candidates, giving Mr Mitchell 48,416 votes to Ms Bailey’s 48,409. If the result stands, it is set to be the tightest margin in the nation. It is already one of the tightest poll results in Australian history.
The outcome in the seat, which has swung back and forth between the two major parties since its creation in 1984, is extraordinary given that on election night – Saturday 24 November – political commentators were giving the seat to Ms Bailey.
But Mr Mitchell, a former Victorian Upper House MP who was running in his fourth election campaign, clawed back ground as postal and absentee votes trickled in.
On Sunday, he said he had not believed the commentators who had written him off on election night.
“When they were saying that, I was at our (election night) function and I was saying, ‘no, it isn’t over yet’.”
The divisional returning officer for McEwen, Robert Berglund, said a recount would be carried out only if good reason could be shown – the narrow margin alone was not enough to prompt the AEC to go through each of the 100,000 ballot papers again.
If a recount is ordered, a result should be known by the end of this week.
Mr Berglund said that he had expected the result in McEwen to be tight.
“It has, historically, been a marginal seat, generally claimed by the government of the day by a very narrow lead.”
The 6.42 per cent margin after the previous election was an anomaly for Ms Bailey, who won the seat in 1990, lost it in 1993 and reclaimed it in 1996 when the Howard Government was swept to office.
The 2007 poll results showed a strong swing to Labor in fast-growing, urbanising areas.
Areas including Badger Creek, Buxton, Millgrove and Woori Yallock also swung heavily to the ALP with the Liberal vote down by between 9 and 10.78 per cent.
Strong support for the Liberals came in areas such as Yarra Glen where they lost just 0.40 per cent.
In Healesville the swing against the government was 2.61 at the High School but 4.67 at the Memorial Hall polling booth. At Warburton the swing was 4.9 to Labor, with an even bigger swing at Warburton East of 8 per cent.
Across the nation, Kevin Rudd and his Labor team benefited from a 5.6 per cent swing. In some McEwen polling booths, the pro-Labor swing was double that, giving Mr Mitchell an overall swing of 6.42 per cent.
Mr Berglund declined to comment on Ms Bailey’s latest concerns about the result until counting was finished.