State Western Australia MP Ian Blayney Area 1,798 km² Namesake Geraldton | Dates current 1890–present Electors 25,641 (2017) Member of parliament Ian Blayney | |
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Demographic Electoral region of Agricultural Party Liberal Party of Australia | ||
Geraldton is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Western Australia.
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Geraldton was one of the original 30 seats contested at the 1890 colonial election. The district is based on the eponymous regional city.
Labor held throughout most of the twentieth century, Geraldton has since become a seat that has changed hands regularly in the last two decades.
Geography
The district has always been based on the regional coastal city of Geraldton. Electoral reform ahead of the 2008 state election necessitated an increase in the district's enrolment and thus an expansion of its boundaries, as it did for all non-metropolitan districts. This means the district now includes all outlying suburbs of the city, as well as adjacent rural areas. The district's current boundaries are identical with the former City of Geraldton-Greenough, itself a newly formed local government area.
History
Geraldton changed hands frequently between different members and parties during the early history of the seat in the late 19th and early 20th century. After 1914 however, the seat was held by the Labor Party for all but three of the next 77 years. The seat's longest serving and most famous member was John Willcock, member from 1917 to 1947 and Premier of Western Australia from 1936 to 1945.
The resignation of Labor member Jeff Carr following his sacking as minister in 1991 triggered a by-election that was won by the Liberal Party's Bob Bloffwitch, the seat's first non-Labor member in more than four decades. Bloffwitch held the seat at the subsequent 1993 state election, when the Liberal Party won government. The seat changed hands with the next change of government at the 2001 state election when Labor candidate Shane Hill was elected. Hill held the seat for two terms before Liberal Ian Blayney won it with a change of government at the 2008 state election. In fact the redistribution prior to that election had turned the seat into a notionally Liberal seat.