Gabriel Polychronis: The sliding doors moment that almost plunged the Liberals further into the wilderness

The SA Liberal Party’s issues go far beyond gender – and there was a sliding doors moment just a month ago that summed it up perfectly, Gabriel Polychronis writes.

The brutal erosion of the Liberal Party’s buffer in the normally safe seat of Bragg can be traced back to a morning press conference one month ago.

At the Glenunga Hub in Burnside, Opposition leader David Speirs introduced the party’s new bushy-tailed candidate, Jack Batty.

But it was almost the complete opposite of an introduction, as Speirs revealed to the media he didn’t want him as the candidate – he voted for a different person, a woman.

This was the sliding doors moment that would trigger a 7.2 per cent swing away from the Liberals at Saturday’s by-election and prompt further wound licking.

Speirs couched his rejection of Batty, a former staffer of Christopher Pyne for nearly five years, as wanting more females in the party.

He said there was “too much hypocrisy in politics” for him to vote for Batty after spearheading a push to elect more women. It’s a nice sentiment, but the SA Liberals’ terminal issues go beyond gender.

The core Liberal base is sick of the party spitting out moderate graduates from the school of Pyne.

Opposition leader David Speirs has welcomed Jack Batty as the new Liberal candidate for Bragg - but says he did not vote for Batty and would have liked to see a woman selected. There are two Liberal women in SA’s lower house.https://t.co/[e-mail]/3XtnA3AMoy

— Kathryn Bermingham (@KatBermingham) June 6, 2022

As one conservative Liberal remarked: “The Christopher Pyne experiment is over”.

The SA Liberals now seem more left-wing than Labor, which is led by the comparatively conservative Peter Malinauskas (who is now probably regretting managing expectations in the eastern suburbs seat).

Moderate leaders argue the Coalition lost the federal election because they didn’t have enough candidates representing the views of inner city progressives.

The Bragg result paints a different picture. It shows at least in part, a party that has strayed so far to the left that voters think they may as well vote for the real thing – Labor or the Greens – rather than the knock-off brand. Having another bloke as the candidate also didn’t help.

One rare thing the moderate and conservative Liberals can agree on, it’s that there was also immense voter fatigue from having three elections in just a matter of months.

Jack Batty has only narrowly won Vickie Chapman’s former seat of Bragg. Picture: Morgan Sette

Nearly 18 per cent of voters chose Greens candidate Jim Bastiras, while 31.9 per cent put Labor’s Alice Rolls first, though many postal votes are still to be counted.

In a stunning act of Liberal rejection, Labor won the Burnside booth with 50.3 per cent of the two party-preferred count.

Former Liberal staffer Chelsey Potter, who played a pointless game of will-she-won’t-she, said she “would have won” if she ran as an independent in a late-night pity seeking tweet on Saturday.

It’s doubtful she would have won – but she certainly would have caused the Liberals to lose.

She would have preferenced the Liberals – but for most voters, who comes after the number 1 is an afterthought. It’s entirely plausible to think many Potter voters would have put Labor or the Greens second, thus gnawing at Batty’s 1 per cent lead and plunging the party further into the wilderness.

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