Election 2022: How the chips are falling in SA
The result may remain on a knife edge in two key SA battlegrounds but the outcome looks clear in these races.
Federal Election
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Upstart Independent Liz Habermann has remained upbeat despite her tilt at the outback seat of Grey appearing to fall short of toppling veteran Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey.
Ms Habermann came close to winning the seat of Flinders at the state election and said that in the days after the heartbreaking loss she was not sure whether to contest in the federal election.
“It took people coming to me and saying that they wanted me to run and represent them,” she said.
“Even if I don’t get across the line they are still talking about us, we have still made a difference because people were really crying out for change here.”
Ms Habermann said it was too soon to call the result as large polling booths in the giant electorate had yet to be called.
The seat of Grey covers an area larger than the entire state of NSW, including vast swathes of desert all the way up to the Northern Territory and across to Western Australia and Queensland.
It is considered a safe Liberal seat after being held by the party since 1993.
Mr Ramsay said he was confident in the early results.
“I am encouraged by what is coming in,” he said.
“It is very encouraging. The job is to really do what is best for the people of the seat of Grey.
VOTES ARE IN: TONY PASIN WINS BARKER
The independent candidate nearly plunged the SA Liberals further into oblivion after achieving a 21 per cent swing away from the party in Flinders at the state election.
Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie received a $200,000 Climate 200 donation for her campaign’s coffers in early April, while Boothby candidate Jo Dyer was given $20,000.
Both candidates defended the donations, with Ms Sharkie stressing she worked “entirely for the people of Mayo, and the no-strings donation has no influence on my policymaking or political positions”.
The Advertiser has asked Climate 200 to explain why the $40,000 donation to Ms Habermann was made so late in the campaign.
Climate 200 is led by Mr Holmes a Court, who is the son of billionaire Robert Holmes a Court. He came under fire recently for approaching Liberal Senator Jane Hume at a Melbourne pre-poll station. Mr Holmes a Court ignored Senator Hume’s repeated requests to “leave me alone”
Candidates backed by Climate 200 are threatening to topple Liberal MPs across the state.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is facing an onslaught from “teal” independent Monique Ryan in his Melbourne seat of Kooyong, while Tim Wilson looks set to lose his Goldstein seat to former ABC journalist Zoe Daniel.
Labor holds Spence
By Mitch Mott
Labor has held the northern suburbs seat of Spence despite almost halving their grip on the safe electorate.
Labor candidate Matt Burnell is expected to claim the seat, which has been vacant since Nick Champion resigned to contest the state election, with 44.4 per cent of the primary vote as of 8am last night.
However, the Labor vote was diminished on their commanding lead at the 2019 election which saw them hold the seat with a 14.1 per cent margin.
Mr Burnell experienced a 6.6 per cent swing away from his party at the polls.
Liberal candidate Shawn Lock also saw his party lose ground with a 2.2 per cent swing away.
As was the case across the country minor parties and independents appeared to eat away at the votes of the major party.
One Nation candidate Linda Champion polled almost 11 per cent of the vote while Greens candidate David Deex pulled 11.9 per cent, a 4.7 per cent increase on the 2019 election.
Mr Burnell said he was thrilled with the result, though he would have liked the win to be by a greater margin.
“I think when you’re not an incumbant and you’re coming into a six candidate race then this was a fair outcome,” he said.
Mr Burnell said he was not surprised about the strong One Nation vote.
“We knew from the state election that One Nation have been trying to set up a base in the northern suburbs,” he said.
“They were polling around seven to ten per cent leading up to the election and it seems that is what they actually got.”
Mr Champion said Mr Burnell would be a great addition to federal parliament.
Spence has been held by Labor since 2007 when it was wrested from Liberal control for the first time in more than 40 years.
Up until 2019 it was the seat of Wakefield and encompassed more rural areas but was redrawn to cover primarily the northern suburbs of Adelaide and the burgeoning Gawler area.
Since then 2007 it was held by Nick Champion but at the time of the vote on Saturday was technically vacant.
Makin of a win for Zappia
By Clare Peddie
Tony Zappia has firmed his grip on his northern suburbs electorate after a modest swing to him in early counting.
At 9pm on Saturday the AEC tally room projected a win for Zappia with 60 per cent of the two party preferred vote, after 37 per cent of the vote had been counted.
Mr Zappia first won the seat in 2007 with an 8.6 per cent swing to Labor, after a decade as Salisbury Mayor.
He had attracted a 0.7 per cent swing last night.
“After being subjected to a longer than normal national election campaign, much of which was unedifying, Australians just want to see their Government focused on addressing the things that matter to them,” Mr Zappia said.
Those things include “the crises in aged care, housing, health and the NDIS”, he said.
“All of these sectors were neglected by the Morrison government which was mired in incompetence, disunity, waste and rorts.”
The former power lifting champion vowed to “stand up for the very issues which Anthony Albanese prioritised in the national campaign because they are also priority issues for people in Makin”.
“The pressure from living costs are real and becoming a way of life for many as wages fall behind and there are people in my electorate who regularly depend on charity food hampers even though they work full time,” he said.
“People want to feel confident that they and their children will have secure jobs with good pay and for the government to take genuine action on climate change.”
Sharkie’s still full of beans in those Hills
By Rebecca Whitfield-Baker
AS the words to Jimmie Davis’ “You are My Sunshine” rang out, the member for Rebekha Sharkie’s election night party, resembled a folk festival – only inside a movie cinema.
As the sitting member, celebrating her third election win, after the Liberals’ Allison Bluck conceded defeat at 8.35pm, the crowd inside the Wallis Cinema at Mr Barker let out joyous cheers.
With 34 per cent of the vote counted, Ms Sharkie had secured more than 62 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, more than doubling her previous margin.
Mayo, which extends from the Adelaide Hills across the Fleurieu Peninsula to Kangaroo Island, was once a blue-ribbon Liberal seat held by Alexander Downer for 24 years. Ms Sharkie has held the seat since 2016.
It was a remarkably fresh-faced Ms Sharkie who was welcomed by her most devoted supporters.
“Well, I started at seven o’clock this morning and was freezing cold in the polling booth and I stayed until six o’clock when the doors closed ... so I had a really long, hot shower as I was just frozen to the bone,” she said.
She said she was buoyed by the warm reception at the polling booths and again tonight, paying tribute to her supporters.
“They’re everything. I couldn’t I couldn’t do this job. I wouldn’t be able to get across the line, if it wasn’t for my supporters,” she said.
“Because, you know, we’ve never had big money campaigns. It’s all about people … we love doing (this even) in the cinema, so that people can sit down and get a comfy chair and just kick back and relax.”
In 2019, she recorded majorities in 60 of the 74 polling places, doubling her vote at the Parndana Community Health Centre in the centre of Kangaroo Island, from 34.4 per cent.
The campaign was not without its controversy, with Liberal Allison Bluck embroiled in a bizarre pre-election blunder in which she appeared to claim credit for the work of a stranger with a similar name. The Liberal Party sent a letter from Allison Bluck to thousands of households in Mayo that claimed she was the manager of the “Kangaroo Island Nature Trail”.
But the manager of the KI Wilderness Trail is actually Alison Buck – who said she had never heard of Ms Bluck.
Ms Bluck acknowledged the error and apologised.
True Labor of love in Adelaide
By Gabriel Polychronis
Steve Georganas has further tightened Labor’s grip on the inner-city seat of Adelaide, easily dispatching Liberal challenger Amy Grantham.
Mr Georganas’s margin looked set to be extended even further, securing 60.4 per cent of the two-party preferred vote by 8.30pm.
Electors in his seat booted out former MP Rachel Sanderson in the March state election for Lucy Hood, who secured a 7.1 per cent swing.
This swing was partly reflected in the federal race for Adelaide, which has been in Labor hands since Kate Ellis won the seat off the Liberals in 2001. The Liberal vote suffered heavily in Adelaide with about 7.4 per cent of its supporter base deserting the party this election.
In a trend spotted across the country, the Greens’ vote was heavily boosted in Adelaide with candidate Rebecca Galdies picking up 4.4 per cent more first preferences votes for the party than last election.
“It really was about a choice between more of the same and a new positive direction under Labor,” Mr Georganas told the Sunday Mail on Saturday night.
“The mood I felt on the booths was one of excitement and hope.
“When it all comes down to it, one of the most important things was that people could have their say.”
Mr Georganas is a backbench MP who first entered parliament in the electorate of Hindmarsh, defeating now-Senator Simon Birmingham in 2004. He was defeated in 2013, before recapturing it in 2016. He moved to the Adelaide seat in 2019 after Ms Ellis’s retirement.
Mr Georganas made his vote alongside Premier Peter Malinauskas at the Prospect Primary School on Saturday morning. About 21 per cent of the vote had been counted by 8.30pm.
Butler makes it look easy again
By Rebecca Whitfield-Baker
Heading into the 2022 election as favourite, the sitting Member for Hindmarsh, Labor’s Mark Butler will again represent Adelaide’s west.
At 10pm, with almost 90 per cent of votes counted, he was projected to win 58 per cent of the two-party preferred votes, ahead of Liberal’s Anna Finizio with 42 per cent – or 14,851 of primary votes compared to 10,156.
The Greens’ Patrick O’Sullivan was sitting in third on 5,448.
However, reflecting trends seen across the nation, the Greens attracted a swing to it of four per cent, picking up disgruntled voters.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation candidate Walter Johnson also enjoyed a swing of more than four per cent.
Following on from this, Labor experienced a swing against it, of about 2.5 per cent while Liberals took a first preference hit of almost five per cent, compared to 2019.
Mr Butler’s been the federal representive since 2007, first in the seat of Port Adelaide, shifting to Hindmarsh when his former seat was abolished in 2019.
The senior Labor leftwinger didn’t hold back after his party lost last time round to “Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog”, arguing the ALP should not attempt to sugar-coat the 2019 defeat.
“We got out lowest primary vote in a century, against a government the prime minister described himself as the Muppet Show,” he said at the time
The former lawyer has held the seat since, responsible for several portfolios while in opposition, including, environment, climate change and water.
Most recently he has been the opposition spokesperson for Health and Ageing.
The ALP has predominantly held the western suburbs seat since it was first contested in 1903, lost for the first time in nine decades to the Liberal Party in 1993.
Labor has mostly retained the seat since winning it 2004.
At the last election in 2019, Labor recorded majorities in 42 of the 56 polling places.
In 2022, lawyer and ministerial adviser Anna Finizio had contested the seat for the Liberals.
George from the United Australia Party was sitting in fourth, with 1,866.
Ms Finizio, soon after conceding defeat, paid tribute to her supporters.
“I am so thankful to all our dedicated volunteers who assisted over the course of the campaign and the opportunity to further connect with the wonderful community of Hindmarsh,” she said.
Queen still reigns in Kingston
By Clare Peddie
Labor’s Amanda Rishworth, the federal member for Kingston, was on track to retain her seat on Saturday evening.
At 9.15pm, the AEC tally room projected a win for Ms Rishworth with 67 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, after 30 per cent of the vote had been counted.
The former psychologist first won the seat at the tender age of 29 with a 4.5 per cent swing to Labor in 2007. What was then a marginal seat is now very safe for Labor.
Stretching from Flagstaff Hill in the north to Maslin Beach in the south, the electorate covers 165sq km with parts of Marion council and Onkaparinga council.
Ms Rishworth said cost of living, access to GPs, quality aged care, patchy NBN and the struggle to get decent government services were the main issues for voters.
Action on climate change was also important, alongside lowering electricity costs.
“Despite being a safe seat we’ve been able to secure, of course, commitments,” she said.
“There’s the on-off ramp on Majors Rd, which has a real benefit for commuters in my electorate. We’ve got the Flinders Medical Centre, a huge benefit in my electorate, but also we’ve announced $5m for urban waterways around the Onkaparinga ... investments in local infrastructure ... So a Labor government will see some really good local community infrastructure delivered as well as big projects.”
The 43-year-old married mother of two said it would be “a great, great privilege” to be re-elected.
After serving as opposition early childhood education spokeswoman, Ms Rishworth said it would be a “huge honour” to be a minister, should Labor form government.
“I want to implement the announcements we’ve made around early education and childcare,” she said.
“We have an incredibly ambitious agenda and I would really look forward to implementing those policies that we’ve announced.”
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