Electoral district of Giles Information & Electoral district of Giles Links at HealthHaven.com

Giles is an electoral district of the House of Assembly in the Australian state of South Australia. The electorate, named after explorer Ernest Giles, is the largest in South Australia, covering a 500,738.0km² swathe of outback South Australia. Its main population centre is the industrial city of Whyalla, but also covers significant areas of pastoral leases and Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal land. The electorate also takes in a number of regional towns, including Coober Pedy, Cowell, Kimba, Maralinga, Quorn, Roxby Downs, Tarcoola, Woomera and part of Hawker.

Giles is a comparatively recent creation, having only been created at the 1991 electoral redistribution, where it replaced the electorate of Whyalla. It covers an area that has traditionally been a stronghold of the Australian Labor Party, with support for the party being particularly strong in the city of Whyalla as well as in remote mining towns and indigenous communities. As such, sitting Labor MP for Whyalla and incumbent government minister Frank Blevins had little difficulty winning Giles when it was first contested at the 1993 election, passing a sizable margin on to his Labor successor Lyn Breuer, who held the seat at the 1997 and 2002 elections. Breuer's margin had been halved by the latest redistribution, which moved several heavily Liberal-voting areas into Giles, but with another increase in her margin at the 2006 state election, she appears unlikely to be seriously challenged for the foreseeable future.

[edit] Members for Giles

Member		Party	Term
	Frank Blevins	Australian Labor Party	1993–1997
	Lyn Breuer	Australian Labor Party	1997–present

[edit] Election results

South Australian state election, 2006: Giles
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	Lyn Breuer	11,121	58.2	+8.9
	Liberal	Tina Wakelin	5,775	30.2	+0.3
	Family First	Cheryl Kaminski	1,106	5.8	+5.8
	Greens	Kieran Turnbull	854	4.5	+4.5
	No Rodeo	Esmond Vettoretti	257	1.3	+1.3
Total formal votes			19,113	96.6	-0.7
Informal votes			677	3.4	+0.7
Turnout			19,790	86.5	-0.6
Two Candidate Preferred Result
	Labor	Lyn Breuer	12,317	64.4	+4.7
	Liberal	Tina Wakelin	6,796	35.6	-4.7
	Labor hold		Swing	+4.7

[edit] External links