Kavel – SA 2022

LIB 14.6%

Incumbent MP
Dan Cregan (IND), since 2018.

• Geography
• Redistribution
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2018 result
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
Regional South Australia. Kavel covers areas to the east of Adelaide, with most of the seat lying in the Adelaide Hills, as well as the town of Mount Barker.

Redistribution
Kavel lost Hahndorf, Carey Gully and Verdun to Heysen. Kavel also expanded on its southern edge into an area previously included in Heysen, and on its northern edge to take in Lobethal and Lenswood from Morialta. These changes reduced the Liberal margin from 14.8% to 14.6%.

History
The electorate of Kavel has existed since the 1970 election. The seat has always been won by the Liberal Party.

Roger Goldsworthy won Kavel in 1970. Goldsworthy served as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party from 1975 to 1982, first as Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and then from 1979 as Premier.

Goldsworthy was re-elected seven times, and resigned in 1992 to provide an opportunity for John Olsen to return to the state Parliament.

Olsen had been first elected to the House of Assembly as Member for Rocky River in 1979. Olsen was elected Liberal leader following the party’s defeat at the 1982 election, defeating his rival Dean Brown. He moved to the new seat of Custance in 1985, after Rocky River was abolished.

Olsen led the Liberal Party to defeat at the 1985 and 1989 elections, and in 1990 resigned from Parliament to run for the Senate at the 1990 election.

Olsen served barely two years in the Senate, before he resigned to run for the 1992 Kavel by-election. On the same day, Dean Brown returned to Parliament at the Alexandra by-election. Brown defeated Olsen for the Liberal leadership.

Brown led the Liberal Party to victory at the 1993 election, and became Premier. Olsen faced Brown for a third leadership ballot in 1996, and won the leadership, and became Premier.

Olsen led the Liberal Party to narrow victory at the 1997 election. In 2001, he was forced to resign as Premier due to the Motorola affair. He retired at the 2002 state election.

Mark Goldsworthy, son of former MP Roger Goldsworthy, won the seat of Kavel in 2002. He was re-elected in 2006, 2010 and 2014.

Goldsworthy retired in 2018, and was succeeded by the Liberal Party’s Dan Cregan. Cregan resigned from the Liberal Party in late 2021 to sit as an independent.

Candidates

• Padma Chaplin (Animal Justice)
• Melanie Selwood (Greens)
• Glen Dallimore (Labor)
• Dan Cregan (Independent)
• Rowan Mumford (Liberal)
• Gayle Allwood (One Nation)

Assessment
Kavel was a safe Liberal seat on paper, but the sitting MP will be contesting the seat as an independent. It’s hard to say how he will perform against his former party.

2018 result

2018 two-candidate-preferred result

2018 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths in Kavel have been divided into three areas: central, north and Mount Barker.

The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, with 61.7% in Mount Barker and 67% in the other two areas.

Election results in Kavel at the 2018 South Australian state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes, two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, SA-Best, Labor and the Greens.

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