Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

Lusher concedes seat of Hume to Fife
After a campaign that threw
two coalition front-benchers
against each other, Mr Stephen
Lusher (NP, NSW) concedcd de:
feat yesterday to the Liberal's Mr
Wal Fife in the electorate of
Hume.
The contest between the two
men was made necessary by the
electoral redistribution earlier
this year, which took Wagga —
Mr Fife's home town — out of
the electorate of Farrer into
Hume. Mr Fife had declared
before the redistribution that he
would contcst whichever seat in
cluded Wagga.
At the close of counting yester
day Mr Fife had 18,995 votes to
Mr Lusher's 18,035 votes, and
Mr Lusher said it was unrealistic
to expect that he could pick up
the seat from votes that remained
to be counted.
Mr Lusher, who first won the
seat for the National Party in
1974 and has turned it into a safe
conservative seat federally (the
area returns an ALP member in
the NSW Parliament), said he
did not know what his future
was, but he had several options.
At the start of the year Mr
Lusher stood for the leadership of
the party, and commented at the
time that he lost it because of his
low media profile. This situation
changed in April when Mr
Lusher spent a week living on
unemployment benefits in an ef
fort to prove they were excessive.
Yesterday, he telephoned Mr
Fife to congratulate him on win
ning the scat.
Mr Fife gained a swing of 7 per
cent to finish second in the poll
ing behind Mr Rod Milliken
(Lab). When Mr Lusher is
eliminated from the count, his
preferences will flow on to. Mr
Fife, and place him well ahead of
Mr Milliken.
Mr Fife said yesterday that he
had been forced to run against
Mr Lusher because the National
Party had supported the legisla
tion which led to the redistribu
tion. In the provisional re
distribution Wagga was placed in
Farrer, but in the final redistribu
tion it had been placed in Hume.
"I regret very much that Ste
phen Lusher and myself will not
be members of the new Par
liament," Mr Fife said. "That
could have been avoided and
should have been avoided."
He said it was regrettable that
National Party leaders had made
it clear to him that he would be
opposed by the Nationals regard
less of which seat he stood for.
"This attitude was nonsense
because of my strong support and
commitment to the coalition,
and because it would lead to an
unneccesary waste of human and
financial resources during the
campaign," he said.
$