NXT looms at major threat for Liberals, Labor at state election

BOTH men running for the job of premier at the next state election have warned that the Nick Xenophon Team will be a major player, but claim he poses a bigger threat to their rival.

• How Labor outfoxed the NXT factor, and Libs didn’t
• Stunning NXT win as blue-ribbon Lib seat falls
• Analysis: Three-party state where rules don’t apply
• What went wrong for the Coalition
• Overheard at the polling booths

BOTH men running for the job of premier at the next state election have warned that the Nick Xenophon Team will be a major player, but claim he poses a bigger threat to their rival.

Premier Jay Weatherill and Opposition Leader Steven Marshall head to the polls in March 2018 in a political environment that’s been transformed by the NXT’s arrival as a serious third party.

Mr Weatherill has told The Advertiser that Labor’s strong result in SA, where it may gain a seat in each of the Senate and Lower House, was partly built on his two-year campaign against federal health cuts.

Labor’s campaign promise to defend Medicare resonated most strongly in SA due to concerns being regularly raised locally about the Coalition’s tough 2014 Budget, he said.

“The foundation was laid in us building a national campaign about healthcare cuts, and backed up by entering into the national debate about revenue,” Mr Weatherill said.

“My fundamental objective in backing (NSW Liberal Premier Mike) Baird into having a discussion about GST was because I wanted to back in a conservative who was talking about healthcare cuts.

Premier Jay Weatherill in Question Time.

Opposition leader Steven Marshall.

“When Bill (Shorten) doubled down on that with his Medicare campaign, that drew on that foundation and therefore resonated more powerfully here than in other places.”

Mr Weatherill said the SA Liberals failed to show strong convictions over the long-term.

“A lot is made of campaigning as if it is the dark arts,” he said.

“I think it’s got more to do with the quality of the policy calls that are made. You’ve first got to have something to sell.”

Mr Weatherill also warned the Liberals that the NXT’s victory in the Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo gave it a base on which to build attacks against the Liberals in a state election.

“The fact is that he (Senator Xenophon) was peeling off almost three to one from the Liberal vote compared to Labor,” Mr Weatherill said.

“Xenophon, as he considers his position at the state election, is going to want to consolidate his position in ... those (Liberal) areas.”

Nick Xenophon, leader of the NXT party, after his party’s historic election night. Pic: AFP

Mr Marshall said the federal result showed a clear volatility and unease in the SA electorate.

“We’ll look at these results very closely,” he said. “Clearly people are dissatisfied with where they are in SA at the moment, which is causing people to move away from major parties.

“We’re going to have to work extraordinarily hard to convince people in the lead-up to the next election that we have a much better plan than Labor to create long-term jobs.”

Mr Marshall said there were some “massive swings” in individual areas based on “unique” factors, and a deliberate NXT strategy to target what it saw as vulnerable Liberal seats.

“It’s just so volatile. People are dissatisfied with their lot in SA, they’re anxious about their future and votes are clearly up for grabs,” he said. “It’s much too soon to extrapolate.”

Analysis: Pollies face navigating new terrain

Daniel Wills

BE AFRAID. The state electoral map will be literally rewritten when new draft boundaries are handed down in just six weeks’ time.

On Saturday night, all conventional political wisdom was also torn up.

The rise of Nick Xenophon as a force in both houses of Federal Parliament has shown there is a huge mood for something different across SA. The threat he poses in both the affluent Adelaide Hills and the working class and farming areas of the north shows it knows no bounds.

Never before has running for a position in SA politics been so akin to buying a lottery ticket. As the dust settles from the federal election, questions, senior major party strategists are already asking what it means for the next state poll in March 2018.

The early consensus is that all anyone knows is the game has dramatically changed.

The Nick Xenophon Team now has a Lower House foothold. Freshman NXT MP Rebekah Sharkie will be the member for a broad sweep of the city and regional south that covers state seats held by longstanding MPs, including former leader Isobel Redmond.

They are all areas that appear safe on paper but which are vulnerable to a strong independent.

And even where the NXT hasn’t won seats, it seriously threatened to do so for much of the past six months and forced the major parties to recalibrate plans to sandbag.

Senior sources on both sides of state politics have told The Advertiser NXT would have won up to five Lower House federal seats if the election were held a fortnight ago, before Labor’s campaign on penalty rates and the Coalition’s call to avoid a hung parliament began to bite.

The first piece in the state election equation will be the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission’s release of a draft new seat map on August 15. It has released some material about possible changes that indicate it may be considering something radical.

If this occurred, current seats could be rendered unrecognisable and personal votes could be forfeited as popular state MPs have the ground pulled from under them.

The second big unknown is how Senator Xenophon and his team will perform under pressure. They could use their new-found power to demand a bounty of gifts to SA. Or they could fall in a heap when forced to make tough decisions and apply the disciplines of party politics.

The NXT is also unlikely to record as high a vote in a state election where Senator Xenophon is not running. But he casts a long shadow.