Labor’s Mike Kelly has retaken Eden-Monaro, unseating Liberal MP Peter Hendy.
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By Monday, Dr Kelly had received 34,229 votes, scraping ahead of Dr Hendy on 32,353 with two polling places still to be counted.
The former Eden-Monaro Labor MP said after the redistribution of the electorate he was told he had no chance to win it back.
“But instead of crying into our beers we just owned it,” Dr Kelly said.
“We’ve done all we could to learn and understand the needs of the communities.”
With 169 years of family history in the Bega Valley, he said the area was very dear to his heart.
“To be honest, I got a bit choked up when I saw the results there, as it meant a great deal to me,” Dr Kelly said.
With votes still to be counted leaving the final result of the federal election unknown, Dr Kelly said a hung parliament was a distinct possibility.
“In that situation, I’d be putting my money on [Labor leader] Bill Shorten,” he said.
However, if the Coalition managed to form government, Dr Kelly said this would not make his job in Eden-Monaro difficult.
“I had really good relationships with many members of the Coalition when I was in Parliament,” he said.
“Once the election is over, one of my fundamental values is to work together in the interest of the community.”
On Saturday night, Dr Hendy released a statement saying it appeared he did not have enough votes to retain Eden-Monaro.
“For the past three years I’ve been very honoured to represent the people of Eden-Monaro in our Parliament,” he said.
“I’m very proud to have delivered better infrastructure and services across the electorate, including improved mobile phone coverage, record spending on local roads, and rolling out the National Broadband Network.
“I am very proud of the campaign my team and I waged; we focused on policy and presented a positive plan, but above all, we retained our honesty and integrity.”
Dr Kelly said the first issues he would focus on as MP would be the future of the Pambula Hospital, forced council mergers and calling all sides of politics to support Labor’s climate action plan.