Adelaide’s Black by-election is must-win for the Liberals – and a low stakes jaunt for Labor | David Penberthy

In a by-election where the locals think their man was framed by his own party, there’s only one logical beneficiary, writes David Penberthy.

Peter Malinauskas is, we suspect, one of the most popular politicians in Australia. It is more of a suspicion than a scientific fact.

No-one has conducted an exhaustive opinion poll in South Australia since 2022. The last genuine mass expression of political intent in our state was the 2022 election itself.

The Libs were kicked out after just one term, with Mali emerging triumphant from the waters of the Adelaide Aquatic Centre, holding aloft a thumping seven-seat majority.

The Dunstan by-election in March of this year is the only other indicator of how comfortably the government has been travelling throughout this term.

As far as results go it couldn’t have gone much better for the ALP. To win a middle-class seat which had been loyal to former Liberal Leader Steven Marshall for more than a decade was no mean feat.

Especially with the Opposition, then led by David Speirs, rightly arguing that the Dunstan by-election was a chance for voters to send Labor a message over its failure to honour its ramping promise.

Then-opposition leader Peter Malinauskas with his daughter Eliza at the old Adelaide Aquatic Centre in North Adelaide at the outset of the 2022 election campaign. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Former South Australian opposition leader David Speirs.

It was a chance for the voters to do precisely that, and one they chose not to exercise. The Lib vote went backwards, the Green vote jumped, Labor benefited from Green preferences and coasted home.

It was the first time since the 1910s that a government had won a seat from the opposition at a by-election, defying normal trends where by-elections are the means by which voters let governments know they have more work to do.

Against that measurement, you can only conclude that the Dunstan by-election reflected general majority satisfaction with the Malinauskas government.

All of which brings us to Saturday.

The nightmare scenario for the Liberal Party is that they break 110 years of South Australian political history twice in the space of eight months.

To lose one of your own seats to an incumbent government once might be written off as carelessness. Do it twice and an embarrassing pattern is starting to emerge.

There is one issue which is dangerously similar for the Libs with Dunstan and Black – the high personal vote enjoyed by its departing MPs.

Both men enjoyed the prominence of being leaders and both had a reputation for serving their electorates well. Indeed David Speirs might even have more of a local following than Steven Marshall did.

People in Black think Speirs was either stitched up or set up, or deserves to be left alone over the “white powder” scandal he said was the product of a “deepfake” video.

He enjoys an enduring level of support in the area, so who knows what will happen vote-wise now he’s been taken out of the equation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at a campaign rally with South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas in Adelaide. Picture: Matt Turner.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire /Nikki Davis Jones.

Logic tells you that the only possible beneficiary from his absence at the ballot box will be the ALP.

It will just be a question of how many votes shift from the Libs.

When you’ve been in power for a while you take on dirty water. You saw that with the aged Queensland Labor government schlepping towards defeat this past month, and will probably see it in Victoria next year when Dan Andrews’ heiress Jacinta Allen attempts an improbable Labor victory in her own right.

The Malinauskas government is much newer and has had less time to give voters the you-know-whats. But it has issues that make it vulnerable.

Power prices are appalling, higher here than anywhere else. While the past three months of ramping figures are better, time spent waiting in ambulances remains higher than under the Marshall Liberals.

Law and order is becoming a problem with rising unchecked thefts and police stretched more thinly than ever by the recruitment crisis.

Has any of that translated into a sense of anger towards Malinaukas himself?

Are voters itching to send him a signal that they’ve had a gutful? Dunstan told us the answer to those questions were a resounding no.

Though I get the feeling now that traditional Labor voters are itching to get their baseball bats out.

Sadly for the state Liberals they don’t want to get them out on Saturday.

They want to get them out next year when Anthony Albanese seeks a second term.

One of the illustrative things about working in news radio is the steady scroll of text messages you get from people from all walks of life on the issues of the day.

Our audience is broad but also skews more sharply towards older people and people with a small business background, people with a natural bias towards the conservative side.

What I see and hear is a growing tide of anger towards Anthony Albanese at the federal level but a strong current of satisfaction and even bonhomie towards Peter Malinauskas.

For every person texting in about bread and circuses there are five more saying, listen, at least this bloke is having a crack on behalf of South Australia.

The word people use most commonly for Albo is “useless”. Conversely, many of them keep telling us Mali is a good bloke who is doing a fair job.

The bottom line is this.

For Labor in Black, the stakes could not be any lower. This is not even a seat they are meant to win. If they lose, most people will shrug their shoulders.

The headline could fairly read “Liberals retain Liberal-held seat”. It only becomes a bad story for the ALP if the swing against them is big. Then, it’s a message that Labor is failing on services and has its priorities wrong.

For the Libs though... yikes.

A loss really is the absolute last thing they want to think about.