Matt Abraham’s ‘how-to’ guide to the 2022 state election

It’s time to stop flexing up and prepare for March 2022, when Labor and Liberal will fight for the hearts, minds and attention of SA, writes Matthew Abraham.

The Christmas holidays are almost over so it’s time to stop goofing off.

With the March 19 election inching closer by the day, we all need to flex up, to borrow Premier Steven Marshall’s pet phrase.

True, you may have a few other things on your mind.

Like where to get cheap rapid antigen tests.

Or why your booster shot left you with 24 hours of belching and a numb bum cheek.

Or why the Premier doesn’t understand that out in the real world people never say “flex up”.

But we’re on the countdown to the big day so I’ve started work on the Abraham How-To Guide to the 2022 Election. It’s a work in progress but here’s what you need to know so far.

First things first. If you live in Plympton Park, Walkley Heights, Karoonda East, Gumeracha, Brahma Lodge, Paralowie, Globe Derby Park, Dernancourt, Darlington or Kimba, you and many others have moved without having to throw a stick of furniture in the trailer.

In late 2020, South Australia’s electoral boundaries commission unveiled yet another pointless shake-up of our electoral boundaries, shifting thousands of voters in and out of 46 of the 47 seats that make up the lower house of our state parliament. Only the seat of Adelaide is unchanged, but even that was a close-run thing.

It’s the commission’s job to redraw the electoral map after every election, whether it needs it or not. Would the sky fall if they skipped it once in a while? No, it would not.

The Weatherill Labor Government, in one of its dying gasps before the last election, successfully struck out fairness as the major reason to shake up boundaries. This means the March election will be fought unfairly and squarely, which seems fair enough.

Premier Steven Marshall with Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas at a special SA Press Club event. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Morgan Sette

Do you know what seat you’re in? Don’t sweat this one. Political parties want your vote so badly they’ll let you know before polling day. Or maybe you could look it up.

You do need to get your head around the fact that we use a preferential voting system. This means to make your first preference count, you must number the other “preferences” on the ballot paper, even if you don’t prefer these candidates, don’t know them or think they’re obnoxious. It works well, despite allowing the occasional dingbat to become an MP.

Voting is compulsory. This is not a Big Pharma conspiracy. It’s for your own good.

How you vote is important but for most of us voting won’t make any difference to who wins.

To form government, either the Liberal or Labor machines need to win a minimum of 24 of the 47 seats in the lower house, otherwise known as the House of Assembly.

The independent “rat pack” of six MPs make this equation complicated, but the ABC’s resident election brainiac Antony Green calculates that the new boundaries see the Liberals with 27 seats and Labor 20.

Four seats need to change hands to change government.

This is not many, but it’s a lot. It’s why SA ends up with so many minority governments.

Of the 47, only five seats can be described as marginal. Four of these are Liberal seats – Newland on a knife-edge 0.1 per cent, King on 0.6 per cent, Adelaide on 1 per cent and Elder on 2 per cent. Only one ALP seat is in play, Mawson, held by Leon Bignell, on 0.7 per cent. He’ll hold this.

Newland and King are red-hot Liberal risks, but Adelaide and Elder won’t be pushovers.

But strange things happen on election nights. Safe seats aren’t necessarily safe.

Because Port Pirie has been lifted holus-bolus from Frome and plonked into Deputy Premier Dan Van Holst Pellekan’s seat of Stuart, the Liberal two-party margin has fallen from 23.1 per cent to 11.7 per cent on the new boundaries. It should still be safe as houses.

But Frome independent MP Geoff Brock, who delivered power to Labor in 2014, plans to follow his Pirie stronghold into Stuart.

Green calculates that the first preference numbers in the redrawn Stuart put the Liberals on 44.4 per cent, Labor on 15.3 per cent and Brock would get 34.6 per cent. Play preference bingo and Brock is a serious threat.

Green argues if Brock runs “it will be a much closer contest” than it looks on paper.

Voting for the Upper House is even more fun. Steven Pallaras, our very own Elliott Ness, former DPP and self-described “Greek Australian QC”, may even get a gig.

But that’s enough to keep you going for now. Time to flex off.