Rory McEwen
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Rory McEwen, Independent South Australian politician, is the MP for Mount Gambier and currently holds the portfolios for Agriculture Food and Fisheries as well as Forests in the state Labor government, and is also a member of the executive council. Before entering politics McEwen had been a TAFE Teacher/Administrator and much experience in local government including Chair of the Grant Council, Chair of the South-East Local Government Association, and Chair of the Greater Green Triangle Regional Development Asociation.
In 1997, when Liberal member for Mount Gambier Harold Allison retired, it was widely expected that the Liberal preselection would go to Grant District Council chairman Rory McEwen and had also received positive write-ups by The Advertiser as an "experienced political operative", but he somehow lost to Scott Dixon, a self-employed Mount Gambier sawmiller. McEwen ran as an independent and won only a handful of votes ahead of the Australian Labor Party to grab second place, and then by 0.1% sneaked ahead of Dixon on Labor preferences to win the seat in the 1997 election. The election saw him and two other conservative independents holding the balance of power in the Liberals minority government. McEwen made a formal pledge to support the Liberals on matters of confidence and supply.
McEwen was comfortably re-elected in the 2002 election. He was initially highly criticial of Peter Lewis's support of a Labor minority government. But later, McEwen formally supported Labor when he accepted a specially created fourteenth cabinet post in November 2002, becoming Minister for Local Government, Forests, Industry, Trade, Regional Development and Small Business and a promise that he would retain a cabinet position after the 2006 election. McEwen picked up agriculture, food and fisheries and dropped industry, trade and regional development and small business in a reshuffle in April 2004.
MeEwen was involved in a media controversy leading up to the 2006 election. The following paragraph is a quote from the site pollbludgercom:
- Allan Scott, millionaire trucking magnate and publisher of the Border Watch newspaper, stood down editor Frank Morello in the final week of the campaign after the Border Watch ran a number of articles seen to be critical of the Liberal Party and its candidate. The move also prompted the sudden resignation of Lechelle Earl, the writer of the articles and the paper’s chief-of-staff. Craig Bildstein of The Advertiser that "everyone The Advertiser spoke to suspects millionaire businessman Allan Scott is the chief financier" of a local Liberal campaign that has been "flush with funds", with "widespread reports that the Liberals spent $50,000 on TV advertising between October and January". The paper later reported that it had "learned that Labor candidate Brad Coates last week threatened to withdraw $6000 worth of advertising from the Border Watch because of concerns that the paper was ‘too pro-Liberal’". Earlier in the campaign, the Border Watch conducted a "straw poll" of 100 local voters – presumably conducted at the Mount Gambier Arms just before closing time – which failed to get an answer out of 51 of them. Of the remainder, 23 backed Rory McEwen against 11 for Labor and 10 for Liberal. The accompanying article drew attention to this intriguing insight from Antony Green: "There are reports the CFMEU is putting considerable effort into Labor's campaign in this seat. This would be unlikely to elect a Labor MP, but it might be enough to defeat McEwen by squeezing his primary vote, as suggested by the Advertiser's opinion poll. Given Mike Rann has promised that McEwen can stay in Cabinet if Labor is re-elected, there will be a few Labor factional leaders who realise that one way of creating a cabinet vacancy is to defeat McEwen. If there is a vigorous Labor campaign in Mount Gambier, it is more about internal Labor politics in the formation of the next cabinet than realistic hopes of Labor winning Mount Gambier". [1]
There were fears of a voter backlash in the 2006 election due to McEwen siding with Labor, and he was presented with a strong challenge by Liberal candidate Peter Gandolfi. His primary vote dropped about 20%, however he finished 1.7% ahead of the Liberals on first preference and 6.2% on two party preferred. As promised he has kept his cabinet position in the new majority government.
