LIB 13.0%
Incumbent MP
Dennis Jensen, since 2004.
Geography
Southern Perth. Tangney includes a number of suburbs on the southern shore of the Swan River and Canning River. Tangney covers most of Melville council area and part of Canning council area. Suburbs include Alfred Cove, Attadale, Melville, Applecross, Mount Pleasant, Winthrop, Leeming, Willetton, Bicton, Willagee, Ferndale, Rossmoyne and Shelley.
Redistribution
Tangney gained Bicton and Willagee from Fremantle and Ferndale from Swan, and lost Canning Vale to Burt. These changes cut the Liberal margin from 14.7% to 13%.
History
Tangney was created at the 1974 redistribution. The Liberal Party has dominated the seat, winning Tangney at all but two elections.
Tangney was first won in 1974 by 27-year-old John Dawkins, running for the ALP. Dawkins only held the seat for one term, losing it in 1975. Dawkins later won the seat of Fremantle in 1977 and served as a cabinet minister in the Hawke government and then Treasurer in the Keating government until his retirement in 1993.
The Liberal Party’s Peter Richardson won Tangney in 1975. Richardson left the Liberal Party in 1977 and joined the minor Progress Party, a libertarian pro-market party founded by John Singleton. He ran for the Senate in 1977, but failed to win a seat.
Tangney was won in 1977 by Liberal candidate Peter Shack. He held the seat until 1983, when he lost the seat to the ALP’s George Gear. Gear only held the seat for one term, before transferring to Canning in 1984. He later served as Assistant Treasurer from 1993 to 1996, and lost Canning at the 1996 election.
In 1984, Tangney was won back by Peter Shack, after a major redistribution shifted Tangney into much safer Liberal territory. He held it for the next decade, before retiring in 1993.
Tangney was won in 1993 by barrister Daryl Williams, also from the Liberal Party. Williams was appointed Attorney-General upon the election of the Howard government in 1996. He served in the role until 2003, when he became Minister for Communications. He retired from Parliament in 2004.
In 2004, Tangney was won by Dennis Jensen. He is a prominent climate change skeptic, and was often the loudest voice criticising action on climate change in the Parliament. Dennis Jensen has been re-elected three times, but before two of those elections, in 2006 and 2010, the local branch denied him preselection before he was given preselection by the state executive.
In 2016, Jensen was finally defeated for preselection, and has since decided to run for Tangney as an independent.
Candidates
- Dennis Jensen (Independent)
- John Wieske (Australian Christians)
- Thor Kerr (Greens)
- Marion Boswell (Labor)
- Ben Morton (Liberal)
Assessment
While Jensen’s independent candidacy adds an element of uncertainty to Tangney, the Liberal Party will probably retain the seat comfortably.
2013 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Dennis Jensen | Liberal | 48,752 | 57.2 | +1.5 | 55.7 |
| Luke Willis | Labor | 20,744 | 24.3 | -1.5 | 25.4 |
| Peter Best | Greens | 8,882 | 10.4 | -3.1 | 11.0 |
| Wayne Driver | Palmer United Party | 3,738 | 4.4 | +4.4 | 4.1 |
| John Wieske | Australian Christians | 2,236 | 2.6 | +2.6 | 2.4 |
| Stephen Carson | Rise Up Australia | 922 | 1.1 | +1.1 | 1.0 |
| Others | 0.5 | ||||
| Informal | 3,707 | 4.4 |
2013 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Dennis Jensen | Liberal | 55,144 | 64.7 | +2.4 | 63.0 |
| Luke Willis | Labor | 30,130 | 35.3 | -2.4 | 37.0 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into three parts. Polling places in Canning council area have been grouped as “east”. The remaining polling places in Melville council area have been split into “central” and “north-west”.
The Liberal Party’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 58.7% in the east to 65.2% in the north-west.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.3% in the east to 12% in the north-west.
| Voter group | GRN % | LIB 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| North-West | 12.0 | 65.2 | 21,791 | 26.3 |
| East | 10.3 | 58.7 | 19,916 | 24.0 |
| Central | 11.0 | 64.4 | 19,836 | 23.9 |
| Other votes | 10.6 | 63.6 | 21,414 | 25.8 |
Jensen has Buckley’s chance. If his own party’s local branch has made it repeatedly clear they don’t want him, the Lib vote is staying put. As for peeling off potential voters from Labor or the Greens, the guy’s an anti-science weirdo. He won’t be the next Alan Rocher or Paul Filing… he’s only doing it for the few months of extra pay.
As Doug Shave could remind him, this is a part of Perth with a history of kicking out bad Lib MPs, not keeping them.
Ben: in the history bit, it’s worth pointing out Tangney had VERY different boundaries when Labor won it. WA only had 10 seats back then, and Tangney covered most of the southern suburbs of Perth, including Labor-voting areas which are in Brand or Hasluck these days. The 1984 redistribution (which created Brand) made it a safe Lib seat.
It’s time for change. Marion Boswell is the newly elected Labor candidate for Tangney.
[deleted for personal insults]
Insulting candidates directly is really not a good look, WD.
MM
i know.
I just found the jaunty self-promotion pretty distasteful. Plus the lack of a genuine positive message, barring the usual facile slogan, was irritating.
Supposedly this site is not a vehicle for such indulgence.
[deleted for personal insults]
Winediamond, perhaps you can leave it to me to judge if I think a comment violate’s the website’s comments policy. I am not going to let people campaign but a one-line comment announcing someone is running (when I haven’t yet updated the page to include them) doesn’t violate that.
Throwing personal insults at another commenter (candidate or not) does. I’ve already warned you about being personally insulting about politicians.
Ben
Fair enough. I was fairly sure i’d get binned, for throwing the punch.
My prediction: Easy Liberal hold, Jensen’s preferences will flow strongly back to the Liberals, and I can’t see him polling enough to win ala Allan Rocher or Paul Filing in 1996.