A fight has broken out between two prominent candidates for the South West Coast seat, James Purcell and Jim Doukas, with Mr Purcell pulping his how to vote cards that originally gave Mr Doukas second preference.
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Mr Purcell said he had reprinted his how to vote cards to give Mr Doukas fifth preference because he believed Mr Doukas had “stabbed me in the back” by placing him fifth on the Doukas how to vote card.
“So many of my supporters said he (Mr Doukas) had stabbed me in the back and stabbed the community in the back,” he said.
Mr Purcell said he believed Mr Doukas, and the Australian Country Party he represents, had done a deal to get sitting Liberal Member for South West Coast Roma Britnell re-elected.
Mr Doukas denied he had been in talks with the Liberals. He said his party, the Country Party, had worked out where Mr Purcell would be placed on the Doukas how to vote card after talking with Mr Purcell.
The original preference deal took into account that Mr Purcell’s party, Vote 1 Local Jobs, is also running candidates outside South West Coast in the state election.
“He agreed to where he put me. He is the one that has done the backflip,” Mr Doukas said.
The tension between the two was apparent at a Portland forum on renewable energy on Thursday night when Mr Doukas told Mr Purcell not to tell lies that he was against wind farms.
Mr Doukas said he supported communities that had concerns about where wind farms were built but was not against wind farms in general.
In other aspects of the election campaign in the South West Coast seat, 13.6 per cent of the electorate’s voters had taken advantage of early polling and voted by 5pm on Friday, November 16.
South West Coast election manager Ian Sadler said 6427 residents in the electorate had voted at the early polling stations in Warrnambool and Portland and another 507 people had voted for candidates in other electorates.
The South West Coast early polling stations will be open from 9am-5pm on Saturday and 8.30am-6pm on weekdays apart from Thursday when they will be open from 8.30am-8pm.