DEMOCRACY was exercised yet again across the country last week, with voters of the Federal electorates of Lyne and Paterson heading to the polls to have their say on the nation’s future leadership.
Candidates’ volunteer armies mobilised at polling places across the electorates, wearing distinctive campaign t-shirts and brandishing ‘How-to-Vote’ cards.
Polling places around the Myall Coast saw a varied mix of volunteers, as Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) workers diligently carried out the mechanics of democracy inside.
At Hawks Nest and North Arm Cove community centres, only two ballot candidates had volunteers outside, while at Karuah Public School there were four noticeable groups of campaign volunteers.
At Tea Gardens Public School, the most popular for Myall Coast voters, volunteers representing almost all Lyne candidates formed a multicoloured sea of party colours.
As the AEC finalises the vote in the week hence, a true litmus test for Australia’s democracy will be the ‘informal vote’ count.
As of Sunday 4 May, 8,719 informal votes had been counted in the Lyne electorate, representing about eight percent of the vote.
Across the Paterson electorate, 7,745 votes were informal.
In both electorates the ‘informal’ vote actually ranked more popular than 70 percent of candidates on the ballot.
Ten candidates contested the seat of Lyne in the House of Representatives, including nine party candidates and one independent.
Paterson also had 10 candidates, with seven parties and three independents.
The AEC, the official source of Federal Election results, publishes and updates two-candidate preferred (TCP) counts.
Alison Penfold retained Lyne for the Nationals with a comfortable 60.55 percent, while Paterson was retained by Meryl Swanson for Labor with 56.88 percent.
Since its creation in a redistribution back in 1949, Lyne has been a historically safe electorate for the Nationals, only having been held by one Independent, being Rob Oakeshott (2008-2013).
Mr Oakeshott started his political career as a Nationals candidate in the 1996 State election for the electorate of Port Macquarie, choosing to become an Independent there before successfully contesting the 2008 Lyne by-election.
The neighbouring Paterson electorate has a different backstory, having existed twice.
The first time (1949-1984) it was held for 20 years by the Liberals, then 15 years by Country/Nationals.
After it was re-created for the 1993 Federal election, Paterson encompassed several towns on the Myall Coast that are now under Lyne.
The parliamentary seat bounced between Bob Horne (ALP) and Bob Baldwin (LIB) for four successive elections, until Baldwin managed to hold on for 15 years from the 2001 election.
In 2015, Paterson was reconfigured by the AEC to exclude the Myall Coast townships, which all went to Lyne.
The 2016 election saw Paterson become a safe Labor seat, won by Meryl Swanson, who held it through to the 2025 election.
By Thomas O’KEEFE
