State South Australia Electors 23,898 (2014) Area 1,951 km² Elector 23,898 | MP Troy Bell Demographic Rural Member of parliament Troy Bell Namesake Mount Gambier | |
 | ||
Dates current 1938–1993, 2002–present Party Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division) | ||
Mount Gambier is an electorate for the South Australian House of Assembly. It covers the southeast part of the state centered on the city and extinct volcano of Mount Gambier, containing the City of Mount Gambier and District Council of Grant local government areas. The electorate was created in the 1936 redistribution, taking effect at the 1938 election, but the name was not used between the 1993 and 2002 elections (the area was covered by Gordon during that time).
The seat was a marginal to safe Labor seat from 1958 until the 1975 election which saw permanent large two-party swings away from Labor in a few rural seats − 13.5 percent in Chaffey, 15.5 percent in Mount Gambier and 16.4 percent in Millicent. Mount Gambier has since become a safe Liberal seat, though it has had a recent history of independent MPs. It was held between 2002 and 2010 by Rory McEwen, a former Liberal party member who missed out on preselection, so stood as an independent in Gordon at the 1997 election and was successful. While he did not put Labor in office at the 2002 election, he was in various ministerial portfolios in the Mike Rann Labor government nine months after the election until his retirement at the 2010 election. McEwen was succeeded in the seat by another independent, Don Pegler, who narrowly defeated the Liberal candidate on a 0.4 percent two-candidate margin. Pegler was defeated by Liberal candidate Troy Bell at the 2014 election.