Cootamundra takes in parts of the former seats of Burrinjuck and Murrumbidgee.
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The electoral district of Burrinjuck existed from 1950 to 2015. It was a Labor seat from 1950 to 1988, a Liberal seat from 1988 to 1998, and a National Party seat since 1999.
Bill Sheahan first won Burrinjuck in 1950. He had held the seat of Yass since 1941, and the seat was renamed Burrinjuck in 1950.
He served as a minister in the Labor government from 195o to 1965, and retired in 1973.
He was succeeded by his son Terry Sheahan.
He served as a minister from 1980 until 1988, when he was defeated in Burrinjuck, and the Labor government lost power.
Burrinjuck was won in 1988 by Liberal candidate Alby Schultz. Schultz held the seat for ten years, and in 1998 resigned to run for the federal seat of Hume.
He has held Hume ever since. Burrinjuck was won in 1999 by National Party candidate Katrina Hodgkinson. She held the seat until it was abolished in 2015.
Murrumbidgee was one of only two districts to have existed continuously since the first Legislative Assembly was elected in 1856.
The seat was a two-member district from 1856 to 1859, a single-member district from 1859 to 1880, a two-member district until 1885, a three-member district from 1885 to 1894, a single-member district from 1894 to 1920, a three-member district from 1920 to 1927, and a single-member district from 1927 until its abolition at the 2015 election.
The seat was dominated by the ALP in the middle part of the last century, but has been held by the National Party since 1984.
In 1941, the sitting Country Party MP, Robert Hankinson, retired.
The official Labor candidate was defeated by independent Labor candidate George Enticknap, who was then welcomed into the Labor caucus in the Parliament.
He served as a minister from 1960 to 1965, when he retired. Al Grassby won Murrumbidgee for the Labor Party at the 1965 election.
He resigned from the seat in 1969 to take the federal seat of Riverina. He served as Minister for Immigration from 1972 to 1974, when he lost Riverina.
Lin Gordon won the 1970 Murrumbidgee by-election for the ALP. He served as a minister from 1976 until his retirement in 1984.
In 1984, Murrumbidgee was won by the National Party’s Adrian Cruickshank. He came third on primary votes, but preferences from the Liberal Party pushed him ahead of independent candidate Thomas Marriott.
Marriott’s preferences elected Cruickshank over the Labor Party.
He held the seat until his retirement in 1999. Murrumbidgee was held by the National Party’s Adrian Piccoli from 1999 until 2015, when he shifted to the seat of Murray. Source Wikipedia
The by-election voting will take place on Saturday October 14 – Candidates in order of ballot paper:
1/ Philip Langfield – Christian Democratic Party
2/ Jeffery Passlow – The Greens
3/ Matthew Stadtmiller – Shooters, Fishers and Farmers
4/ Jim Saleam.
5/ Charlie Sheahan – Country Labor
6/ Steph Cooke – The Nationals
Philip Langfield: Langfield has been a member of the Christian Democrats for thirty years and has contested a number of state elections. He lives in the village of Wattamondara near Cowra.
Jeffery Passlow: Passlow has retired to a small farm at Stockinbingal in the electorate after previously running a Pathology Laboratory.
He says he has strong family ties to the electorate being born in Gundagai.
Matthew Stadtmiller: Stadtmiller is the former Deputy Mayor of Harden, the Council having been merged with Young and Booroowa to form the new Hilltops Council.
Stadtmiller was elected to the new Hilltops Council at the recent local government elections.
Jim Saleam: Saleam has long been a controversial figure on the right of Australia politics and has been associated with a number of groups and parties campaigning on anti-immigrant issues.
He is standing for the right-wing Australia First Party, he was the party's candidate for Lindsay at the 2016 Federal election.
Charlie Sheahan: Sheahan has lived in the Cootamundra electorate for most of his life and is a farm manager.
He was the Labor candidate for this seat at the 2015 state election. Sheahan was elected to Cootamundra-Gundagai Council at September's LG elections.
Steph Cooke: Cooke has lived in the district for almost all of her life and runs local florist Native Botanical with shops in Cootamundra, Temora and Young.
Cooke has recently taken on the role as the National Party’s Cootamundra electorate candidate following the retirement of Katrina Hodgkinson in September, 2017.