Liberal MP Melissa Price re-elected in Durack

Liberal MP Melissa Price has been convincingly re-elected to the seat of Durack, but question marks remain over whether she’ll retain her Cabinet portfolio for the environment.

Ms Price, pictured, who has held the seat since 2013, enjoyed a swing of nearly 2.5 per cent in her electorate, despite claims she was avoiding media throughout her campaign.

Although Prime Minister Scott Morrison had announced Ms Price would retain her Environment Minister portfolio if re-elected, The West Australianreported on Monday she could be moved from her place in Cabinet after coming under fire for being the Coalition’s “hidden woman” in the campaign.

Ms Price said the Liberal victory was important for the country.

“I am incredibly humbled by the increase in my margin and even more determined to continue to deliver for the people of Durack,” she said.

“The Coalition has outlined a responsible agenda for the future and Scott Morrison and his team will hit the ground running to deliver that agenda.

“It has been an amazing achievement led by an outstanding PM who constantly reminded Australians that you didn’t need to bring someone else down to succeed.

“Compared to the Labor campaign, which pitted groups of Australians against one another with policies like the retiree tax and housing tax.”

At the time of print, Ms Price had 44.2 per cent of first preference votes and 64.8 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, with 65.6 per cent counted.

Labor’s Sharyn Morrow had 21.5 per cent followed by the Nationals Scott Bourne (10.5 per cent), One Nation’s Grahame Gould (9.6 per cent), Green’s Johani Mamid (7.9 per cent), Gary Mounsey from the WA Party (3.7 per cent) and UAP’s Brenden Hatton (2.6 per cent).

Ms Morrow said the result was disappointing for her team, but congratulated Ms Price.

“We’ve put up a really tough campaign ... and we’ve had a really good team supporting us,” she said.

“We did what we could, all of our teams have done everything they could, and we just have to accept the result is what it is.”