Matthew Abraham: The truly astounding results didn’t happen in the ‘burbs – they happened in the bush

The road back for the decimated South Australian Liberals has become ridiculously complicated, writes Matthew Abraham.

The comic strip the Wizard of Id always gave newspaper readers a daily laugh, but one particular cartoon has been immortalised.

It features the knight, Sir Rodney the Chicken Hearted, shouting to his short arse, misery-guts King: “Sire, the peasants are revolting”.

The King, peering moodily over his castle’s stone balcony, replies: “You can say that again”.

The peasants revolted at last weekend’s state election, not just in overwhelming numbers but in a way that is unprecedented in South Australian political history.

I can get the bloodbath for the Marshall Liberals that took place in urban seats.

Three credible polls – this paper’s YouGov poll and two Newspolls run by The Australian – all flagged a swing to Labor of at least six per cent.

This meant the four marginal Liberal seats under 2 per cent – Newland, King, Adelaide and Elder – were all shot to bits. No surprises there.

The fact a few “safe” urban Liberal seats saw huge swings – Labor’s Sarah Andrews booted Liberal Minister Corey Wingard from the southern seat of Gibson with an almost 13 per cent swing – was surprising, but not unprecedented. It happens.

Premier Peter Malinauskas welcomes independent Geoff Brock to his ministry. Picture: Dean Martin

Incredibly, Labor won Waite. It nearly won Unley, now a knife-edge marginal. It nearly won Dunstan, missing out on toppling former Premier Steven Marshall by a few hundred votes.

But the truly astounding results didn’t happen in the ‘burbs – they happened in the bush.

The swings against the sitting Liberal MPs in Liberal fortresses were brutal. Almost without exception, where voters in Liberal country seats had the chance to vote for a non-Liberal candidate, they grabbed it with both hands.

Geoff Brock slayed Dan Van Holst Pellekaan in Stuart, robbing the Liberals of their future leader. Flinders, covering most of Eyre Peninsula, was the state’s safest seat, for either party, on a 26.1 per cent margin for the Liberals before the election. It almost fell to Independent Liz Habermann, who from a standing start got a swing of more than 24 per cent. Liberal MP Sam Telfer now holds it by his fingernails.

In Finniss, on the Fleurieu Peninsula, Iindependent Lou Nicholson fell just short of unseating Liberal MP and former minister David Basham. She achieved a swing of almost 14 per cent.

Of course, the ousted “renegade” Liberals – Troy Bell in Mount Gambier, Fraser Ellis in Narungga and Dan Cregan in Kavel – all breezed home. They’d be nuts to even contemplate returning to the Liberal Party. Right now, the brand is poison. The trend was repeated in seat after seat north of Gepps Cross and east of the Toll Gate and south of Colonnades.

Former Labor Senator and ALP state secretary, Chris Schacht, has spent years campaigning in country seats, particularly the remote far north.

Labor Mawson MP Leon Bignell and his Liberal opponent Amy Williams set aside their differences for the fight for Mawson and capped off a hard-fought campaign with a cold beer. Picture: Supplied

He said Labor’s Leon Bignell, who has mesmerised Liberal voters in Mawson, won every polling booth on Kangaroo Island, a feat not witnessed in 130 years.

“You can now start your car and drive from the north western end of KI at Cape Borda, get the ferry across to Cape Jervis, continue on South Road and drive all the way to Gawler and you’ll never leave a non-Liberal electorate,” he says.

“In fact, apart from about a 50-kilometre stretch around Two Wells in Frome, you can keep driving all the way to the NT border, without leaving a non-Liberal seat. It’s astonishing.”

What on earth is going on? Why would a wave of once rusted-on Liberal voters throw their shoes at the Liberal Party? One possible answer is that they felt they weren’t listened to by a party that was more interested in a $662m “basketball stadium” then, say, restoring the grain railway line in Flinders. If so, this makes the SA Liberals the dumbest political party in Australia.

It’s no accident that new Premier Peter Malinauskas travelled to Mount Gambier on Wednesday, kissing crayfish and cosying up to Troy Bell. He’s sending a message to country independents that they’ll have his ear.

Maybe, though, country voters just wanted to lash out and there’s no logical explanation for it. The name Wizard of Id is a play on the Wizard of Oz, of Dorothy and the red shoes fame. But the word “id” also refers to the primitive, often irrational side of the human psyche that “knowing neither logic nor reason, has the ability to harbour acutely conflicting or mutually contradictory impulses side by side”.

We can be sure of one thing. It all makes the road back to government for the Liberals ridiculously complicated.

The peasants are revolting? You can say that again.