Daniel Wills: Despite electoral boundary poll finding, 2018 state election is still anyone’s game

WITH a year until the final siren, the 2018 state election is still anyone’s game.

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• Polling shows redraw means Jack Snelling could lose
• How the Electoral Commission reshaped the state’s political map

THIS is still anyone’s game.

Tomorrow marks three quarter time in the state electoral cycle, with a year until the final siren.

These polls, taken in three of the key seats that will decide the fate of the government next year, show that surprisingly little has changed since the last election except the boundaries.

Despite the endless list of disasters that are swirling around Labor — in everything electricity to child protection, unemployment and health — it has hardly budged since 2014.

This trio of surveys indicate Labor has built a barricade somewhere near Tea Tree Gully, where it is just as likely as the Liberals to win the critical seat of Newland. The tide seems to be going out on Labor in seats further down the pendulum, but the dam wall is holding back a wipe-out.

But, bizarre at it seems, an exact repeat of the election result from three years ago would still result in this going-on 16-year-old government falling. After almost a decade of complaints from the Liberals about an allegedly “rigged” electoral system, the boundaries have been radically redrawn so that winning a majority of the state vote should also deliver the seats for power.

For Premier Jay Weatherill, these polls are likely to bring some mild relief. He has returned from a losing position before and will back himself to go head-to-head with Opposition Leader Steven Marshall in any debate and come out on top. Mr Weatherill also has the backing of a party machine which has distinguished itself as the nation’s most successful over two decades.

This poll was taken on the night of Mr Weatherill’s $550 million announcement of a plan to fix the power crisis, and it cannot be underestimated how politically key his sales pitch will be.

Along with a smooth opening of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and preventing an unemployment disaster when Holden closes in October, keeping the lights on is essential if Labor is to stop its primary vote from crashing to a humiliating floor. Persistent blackouts next summer would suffocate the Government and smother any message it seeks to put out.

But this poll also raises some alarming questions for the SA Liberals. Much of the decline in Labor support appears to be shifting to independent Senator Nick Xenophon and his new political party, which is also eating heavily into the Liberal primary vote.

The SA Liberals have not had a political environment so ripe for exploitation since the collapse of the State Bank 25 years ago. There was a period last year where it seemed almost every day brought a Royal Commission or an independent report that condemned the Government or shocking news about the state’s failure to live up to its full economic potential. The Government has been in power for 15 years and should have nowhere to hide from responsibility.

But the race remains extremely close. Instead of gearing up for a landslide like WA Labor achieved at the weekend, the kind of victory that gives a new government the political capital to take some seriously bold action, a hung parliament or Labor win are very live possibilities.

Primary support is bleeding to minor parties as the majors in SA are seen to be adrift.

For the state’s interest, as well as their own, both parties now need to be bold.