MP-elect is King of the south

Madeline King has capped off a stunning weekend for the Australian Labor Party, after surging to victory in Brand over four other candidates.

While the dust was yet to settle on a narrow vote count nationwide, Ms King’s victory was a mere formality as she kicked off the week with an 8.5 per cent swing against Liberal Party candidate Craig Buchanan.

With just over 78 per cent of the vote counted on Monday, Ms King held 62.3 per cent of the vote after preferences compared to Mr Buchanan’s 37.7 per cent.

Translated to votes, Ms King held 41,504 to Mr Buchanan’s 25,166.

Ms King said she was in awe of the “extraordinary support” she had received.

“I’m looking forward to serving this community that I grew up in and have spent a lot of time in,” she said.

“As I said throughout the campaign I’m a big advocate for education and access of equity to an excellent education for all.

“So I’ll be getting in touch as soon as I can with the local primary schools and high schools to see what their Labor representative can do for them.”

Mr Buchanan acknowledged Ms King’s success, phoning to congratulate her on Sunday morning.

“This has always been a major Labor seat since inception,” Mr Buchanan said.

“Obviously I’m disappointed to see a swing away from us, but I’m heartened to see the swing away from us in Brand wasn’t as high as it was with other seats.

“We both agreed it had been a pretty decent campaign; there were no major fallouts down this way which was good.”

Greens candidate Dawn Jecks also saw an improvement on her 2013 performance at the polls, with data at the beginning of the week indicating a 3.8 per cent swing in her favour.

Rise Up Australia also saw strong gains on their previous performance, with candidate Philip Scott recording a 4.8 per cent increase in his first preference vote.

Australian Christians candidate Robert Burdett also recorded a 1.5 per cent increase in first-preference votes.

Despite the prospect of Labor or Liberal having to form a minority government to succeed, Ms King said her approach as Member for Brand would not change.

“I’m not worried about a minority government, especially if Labor forms it because we’ve done it before and we are good at it,” she said.

“Despite what everyone says the Gillard government was an extraordinarily productive government … it certainly got through more Acts of Parliament than the last Liberal government did.”

The seat of Brand was originally created in 1984 in response to population growth in Rockingham and Mandurah.

Since inception, the seat has been held by three ALP members — Wendy Fatin, Kim Beazley and Gary Gray.

“I owe a debt of gratitude to the voters of Brand that have made this the safest Labor seat in the State,” Ms King said.