Tom Kenyon - Parliament

Parliament

Kenyon made his first bid for parliament in his early twenties, as the Labor candidate in the safe Liberal state seat of Heysen at the 1997 state election. Several years later, Kenyon was endorsed as the Labor candidate for the safe Liberal federal seat of Mayo at the 2004 federal election. However, he withdrew on the eve of the election campaign, stating that he had stepped in because the ALP had no candidate, assuming that the election date would be called imminently, and that when this did not happen, he was unwilling to resign from his job in order to contest a seat he had no chance of winning.

After two unwinnable endorsements, Kenyon received a break when he was endorsed unopposed as the party's candidate for the electorate of Newland at the 2006 state election, where veteran Liberal MP Dorothy Kotz was retiring. He singled out increasing the use of public transport and addressing youth employment as priorities, and there was some media speculation that his status as a young, relatively conservative father of three would be well-supported in the area of Adelaide known as the "Bible Belt". To this extent, polls as early as 2005 began showing that Kenyon was in with a real chance of winning the seat, although Kotz had previously held the seat by a fair margin. There was ultimately a landslide result across the city on election day, and he polled more than double the required swing needed to take the seat, claiming victory after only 90 minutes of counting.

Kenyon is on the right of the Labor Party, with links to the right-wing Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association. He was the only Labor member to state that he would vote against the planned Relationships Bill removing discrimination against gay couples if a conscience vote were granted - although in the end he voted for the revised Domestic Partners Bill in 2006. Kenyon used his maiden South Australian House of Assembly speech to criticise the SA Greens environmental credentials, and stating that he does not believe South Australia should accept nuclear waste from other countries, and that burial of waste materials is a suitable option. His maiden speech was also used to speak out against abortion.

As of the 2010 state election, Kenyon holds Newland with a margin of 2.2 percent.