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Voting at Corinella, November 2022
Former Wonthaggi mayor Alan Brown was the Liberal MP for the equivalent seat, known then as West Gippsland and before that Western Port, from 1979 to 1996.
Brown’s resignation in 1996 to take up the post of Victorian Agent-General in London forced a by-election for West Gippsland. It was such a safe seat that Labor didn’t bother running a candidate. Instead a local, Susan Davies, ran as an independent and unexpectedly won the seat.
Ms Davies won again at the 1999 state election, one of three rural independents who now held the balance of power. They opted to go with Labor, so bringing a sudden and unexpected end to the Kennett Government.
The Liberal Party reclaimed the seat (now known as Bass) in 2002 and it stayed in Liberal hands until 2018. It was regarded as such a safe Liberal seat that neither major party paid it much attention and Bass was notoriously absent from any pork barrelling.
In 2014 a Bass Coast councillor and former mayor, Clare Le Serve, stood as an independent, winning almost 12 per cent of the vote and turning it from a safe seat into a marginal one.
The ALP took notice. Suddenly the money and promises poured into the electorate. At the 2018 election, Jordan Crugnale secured a 7 per swing to win the seat for the ALP for the first time since it was created in 2002. The margin was 1.8 per cent.
At the 2022 election, the margin was even tighter. Following two weeks of counting and recounting, the seat was declaed in favour of Ms Crugnale, ahead of the Liberal Party's Aaron Brown, son of long-time MP Alan Brown. Labor retained the seat by 202 votes, the tightest margin of the state election.
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