I can’t recall ever seeing a bigger gulf between the ALP and the Libs | David Penberthy

Rare and bizarre things have happened this week which defy political orthodoxy, writes David Penberthy.

The late, great television executive Sam Chisholm had a swashbuckling saying which defined his leadership style when Channel Nine reigned unassailably in the ratings through the ‘80s and ‘90s. “Losers have meetings. Winners have lunch.”

I was reminded of the Chisholm quote this week while reflecting on the yawning chasm in performance and perception between the Malinauskas-led government and the despondent remnants of the South Australian Liberal Party.

Things can change quickly in politics and Peter Malinauskas can come unstuck if his government does not focus and deliver on bread and butter issues.

But it is worth recording this moment in SA political history, as it is a rare one, one which ominously for the Liberals may last some time.

I cannot recall seeing such a gulf between the parties in this state.

Picture: LIV Golf star Cam Smith with Premier Peter Malinauskas

Compare the past fortnight for the two sides of politics, with South Australians riding a wave of pride and excitement about the runaway success of Gather Round. For Malinauskas, having won plaudits for reviving the V8s and now delivering the much greater coup of four-year deals for both the Gather Round and LIV golf tournament, the credit for this has been wholly personal.

Rare and bizarre things have happened this week which defy political orthodoxy. Normally as a matter of principle any politician who stands up at a sporting event is jeered. In Adelaide last weekend, Malinauskas received cheers and applause at games, laughs on The Front Bar and again when he told Jonathan Brown on air during that storm last Saturday that the weather was “shithouse”, and a near standing ovation when it was announced at the Pies-Saints match that Gather Round was here to stay. The bloke can’t make it from one side of the outer to the other without being mobbed by punters wanting selfies. And he is a politician.

We did a poll this week on our radio show – which has plenty of hardcore Liberal listeners – asking whether SA should keep bidding for more events or whether the Premier should stop buggerising around and “get back to his day job”. The second part of the question so inflamed our listeners that they rang in with their own suggested response – leave him alone, he’s doing a brilliant job.

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We even conducted a one-man focus group involving our colleague Steven Rowe, an out-and-proud Liberal who said on air in 2014 that if Jay Weatherill won the election he would leave SA and drive back to Western Australia. (Weatherill offered to drive him there after winning the election.) This week Rowe declared Malinauskas “a doer”, a bloke who was “having a crack”, and said he’d done more than anyone to rev up SA in record time.

Meanwhile, the Liberals were meeting over foam cups of instant coffee and butcher’s paper to knock up a 20-page statement explaining the seven key values that guide the party under leader David Speirs.

This is a document no one will ever read, written by a guy no one believes will ever be premier.

That might sound harsh. But this is the political reality in SA right now. Malinauskas is currently Bob Hawke after the America’s Cup win in 1983.

As for the Libs, well, it’s hard to deny you’re having an existential crisis when you need to produce a seven-point checklist reminding yourselves and everyone else what you stand for.

The emerging problem for the Liberal Party involves a group of people you could call the Malinauskas Liberals, in the same way Ronald Reagan in the 1980s was buoyed by the “Reagan Democrats” and John Howard in the 1990s by the “Howard Battlers”, voters in suburban seats who swung towards the conservatives over things such as the first homebuyers grant, the baby bonus and low interest rates.

Malinauskas is doing the same, only in reverse. By being so determined to rev things up for business, especially after the Liberals’ hands-off approach to Covid, he is garnering support among people who have historically been rusted-on conservatives. The evil added genius of Gather Round and LIV is that the artsy types who think footy is moronic, or worry about human rights in Saudi Arabia, are largely all lefties who’ll still vote Labor or Greens anyway.

I jagged an invite to that fancy AFL dinner last Thursday at Adelaide Oval when the Crows took on Carlton. The guest list included two former SA Liberal premiers, a handful of business people who have almost single-handedly bankrolled every Liberal campaign in SA for the past four decades, and was held in the very room named after the Howard government’s defence minister, lifelong Liberal and former SACA chief Ian McLachlan.

There was not a person at that dinner who does not think Gather Round is the best thing that’s happened to SA since the Grand Prix, if not better.

The kudos this is giving to Malinauskas is massive.

It’s the culmination of his political life so far, where far from being the knockabout outsider who won over the establishment, he’s the knockabout insider who comes from the middle class, went to a private school, led a moderate trade union that wanted to negotiate with business rather than stand over it, and whose social life has revolved around two decades of footy with the Adelaide University Blacks, playing and drinking with Adelaide’s middle and upper class.

These are the people who now say to me, over and over and over, “I’m a Lib but I don’t mind Mali”.

In the past two weeks the words “don’t mind” have gone to “love”. I mean, Stephen Rowe is almost getting ready to hand out how to vote cards. On that point alone the case can rest.

The Libs shouldn’t be worried about vision statements and seven-point plans. They should be worried about losing Unley. They should be worried about losing Morialta. They should be especially worried about losing Dunstan, now the official venue for a mandated four-year pork barrelling exercise which every business owner in Norwood adores.

Three more years of Gather Round takes us up to the 2026 poll.

Right now, if there was a mercy rule, someone would stop this fight.