Electoral district of Goyder


Goyder was an electoral district of the South Australian House of Assembly. It was a 9,258 km² rural electorate located on the Yorke Peninsula and taking in the towns of Ardrossan, Bute, Edithburgh, Kadina, Maitland, Minlaton, Moonta, Port Wakefield, Wallaroo and Yorketown. The electorate was named after George Goyder, a former state Surveyor-General famous for developing Goyder's Line, which indicated the area of the state that had enough rainfall to be suitable for agriculture.
From the 2018 election, Goyder was replaced by the electoral district of Narungga.

History

The abolished seat of Yorke Peninsula formed part of the newly created seat of Goyder at the 1970 election. Goyder has been in non-Labor hands for the entire time from its creation at the electoral redistribution of 1969 until it was abolished in 2018, but had a surprisingly turbulent history. It won by James Ferguson at the 1970 election for the conservative Liberal and Country League, but was won by Steele Hall, who had not long before resigned as Opposition Leader, for the breakaway Liberal Movement at the 1973 election. Hall resigned in 1974 to run for the Australian Senate at the 1974 federal election, and his seat was successfully held for the Liberal Movement by David Boundy at the 1974 Goyder by-election. In 1976, the Liberal Movement merged back into the Liberal Party, and Boundy was given Liberal endorsement to recontest the seat at the 1977 election, defeating challenger Keith Russack for preselection. However, Russack subsequently contested and won the election as an independent Liberal, and was later accepted back into the party. He was succeeded by John Meier at the 1982 election, who subsequently held the seat comfortably for 24 years. Meier retired at the 2006 election and successor candidate Steven Griffiths held the seat on equally comfortable margins.

Members for Goyder

Election results