THE Liberal Party’s Nick McBride will be the third Member for MacKillop after securing a convincing victory at Saturday’s state election.
With 16,301 of the 23,359 votes counted, Mr McBride has topped the booths, recording a 54.1pc primary vote ahead of Tracy Hill (SA-Best), Hilary Wigg (Labor), Richard Bateman (Australian Conservatives), Jon Ey (Independent) and Donella Peters (Greens).
Despite a swing of almost 20pc to SA-Best candidate Tracy Hill, the Conmurra grazier won all 30 of the polling booths in the electorate.
At current count, Ms Hill returned an 18.5pc primary, followed by Labor’s 9.8pc, 9.4pc for Australian Conservatives, 5.8pc for the Independent candidate and 2.4pc for the Greens.
While recording a strong primary vote of 69.9pc in his hometown of Kingston, Mr McBride has so far returned a result of 36.3pc at the Millicent booth, 35pc at Millicent South and 26.7pc at the Mount Burr booth, with counting continuing.
Tallies as of press time yesterday saw Ms Hill trail Mr Bride by just seven votes at the Mount Burr booth.
In the Liberal-stronghold of Naracoorte, Mr McBride won majorities at both the town’s booths and received more than double the vote ahead of Ms Hill in her hometown of Meningie.
Coonawarra resident Jon Ey performed strong in Penola with 13.4pc of the vote, while Mr Bateman outpolled every other candidate with the exception of Mr McBride at his hometown booth of Furner.
Mr McBride celebrated his election with family, friends and supporters at Kingston’s Crown Inn Hotel on Saturday evening, praising party faithfuls and his future constituents for their support.
“I have been overwhelmed by all the support from the electorate and my supporters on the ground,” he said.
“I look forward to catching up with Mitch Williams and hearing about what he learnt in the last 20 years in parliament.
“We want to see that MacKillop is not taken for granted and that a Liberal Government will deliver a genuine balance for city and regional areas.
“All people in MacKillop will benefit from MacKillop being a Liberal-held seat in a Liberal majority government.”
In attendance was Member for Barker Tony Pasin and former Member for MacKillop Mitch Williams, who in a speech commended Mr McBride as “the absolute ideal candidate”.
“To hand over the reigns to Nick is something I have great pleasure in doing because I have great faith in him,” he said.
“He has run a great campaign as well as anybody can expect and the results stand up to themselves.
“Nick deserves it and he’s done a great job.”
