Election To Parliament
Thompson was preselected for the new division of Blair for the 1998 election. Considerable press at the time focussed on the contest, as the redistribution creating the seat had split One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's seat of Oxley between a safe Labor section which remained in Oxley and a rural section which became Blair. Hanson opted to contest Blair, which contained most of her former base.
After election day, the contest was noted for being one of only ten occasions where a candidate who did not finish first or second went on to win under Australia's instant-runoff voting system. Thompson pulled ahead of Labor's Virginia Clarke with National preferences. Clarke's preferences were enough for him to win the two party preferred vote against Hanson.
Read more about this topic: Cameron Thompson
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