Nick McBride’s defection leaves SA Liberals with near-historic low numbers in parliament

After almost 50 years of remarkable underachievement, the state Liberals are at risk of plunging to even lower depths. Paul Starick explains why.

Throughout its modern history of almost 50 years, the South Australian Liberal Party has managed a remarkable record of underachievement.

Even by their own dismal standards, though, the Liberals are at a historic low ebb and on the brink of plumbing further depths.

If politics is governed by the iron rules of arithmetic, as John Howard says, the numbers are disastrous for the SA Liberals.

Nick McBride’s defection, revealed by The Advertiser on Wednesday night, cut the number of Liberal MPs in the state’s lower house to 15.

Former Liberals turned independents (L-R) Fraser Ellis, Nick McBride and Troy Bell in state parliament on Thursday. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Former premier Steven Marshall, who already has hung around in parliament longer than most defeated leaders, is widely expected to quit politics soon. The Liberals will struggle to win his inner-eastern seat of Dunstan, already the state’s most marginal. A loss would take their lower house ranks to 14.

This would be the lowest representation in the party’s history. The SA Liberals were formed in 1974, following on from the Liberal and Country League (1932-74).

By way of comparison, after the worst result in their history at the 2006 state election, the Liberals were left with 15 seats to Labor’s 28 and the Nationals one.

Labor has become the dominant party at state level, holding power for the majority of the Liberals’ modern history. Only once have the Liberals won successive elections, in 1997. Even then, they squandered a huge 1993 margin – that was on the back of Labor being rightly blamed for the State Bank collapse – the biggest financial disaster in SA history.

Defeated premier Steven Marshall leaves Norwood’s Robin Hood Hotel after conceding election defeat on March 19, 2022. Picture: Tom Huntley

The landscape is no better at a federal level. The Liberals hold just three SA lower house seats. One of these, Christopher Pyne’s former Sturt stronghold in Adelaide’s east, is held by James Stevens by just 0.45 per cent – it’s the Opposition’s second-most marginal seat.

The SA Liberals’ epoch was under Mr Howard, who has been evoked this week for skilfully balancing the conservative and moderate Liberal factions in a “broad church”.

Under the nation’s second-longest serving prime minister, SA had five senior Cabinet ministers: Alexander Downer (foreign affairs); Nick Minchin (finance, industry); Robert Hill (defence, environment); Amanda Vanstone (Immigration, Education) and Ian McLachlan (Defence).

At the 2004 federal election, SA had 11 seats – five of these marginal – eight of them Liberal-held.

Inspecting a Collins Class submarine at Osborne Naval Shipyard on October 5, 2004 are (L-R) Defence Minister Robert Hill, Prime Minister John Howard, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. (AAP Image/Alan Porritt)

Even in this federal Liberal golden age, the state branch was floundering after wresting defeat from the jaws of victory after the 2002 election. Former Liberal independent Peter Lewis handed Mike Rann government and, ultimately, Labor 16 years in power.

The dark forces of factionalism that Mr McBride obliquely condemned on Thursday variously simmered and erupted during the Howard era. Canberra moderates and conservatives would regularly call me into their offices to privately denigrate their rivals.

But Mr Howard’s skill as leader was tempering and managing these hostilities with the objective of winning elections. His Cabinet was balanced. Even when one faction gained a ministerial ascendancy, departing rivals like Mr Hill and Ms Vanstone were soothed with plum diplomatic appointments, to New York and Rome respectively.

On the eve of the 2022 state election, the-then Liberal premier Steven Marshall confessed – all too late – that he had not achieved the same balance in his ill-fated Cabinet.

The SA Liberal path forward is tricky, at best.

Winning Dunstan will be tough.

The party is at a crossroads at both federal and state levels.

The Liberals have struggled to define what they stand for, other than opposing Labor. The principles of minimal government spending and aversion to debt were jettisoned – understandably – during the cash splashes to keep the economy afloat at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The party is widely viewed as stale, male and pale.

Game-changing events happen quickly in politics and it’s too easy to write off contenders when they’re down. But winning the 2026 election looks very, very hard for David Speirs right now.