Premier Steven Marshall and Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas lock horns over COVID, jobs, health in SA Press Club leaders’ debate

SA’s leaders took on COVID, jobs, health, the economy and a new $700m Riverbank arena in their first head to head debate on Friday. Watch the replay.

The two men vying to be South Australia’s next premier have faced off in their inaugural debate ahead of the 2022 State Election.

The event marked the first time Premier Steven Marshall and Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas had gone head to head in a battle to win over voters and prove their mettle.

In front of a 300-strong crowd at the Adelaide Convention Centre, Mr Marshall and Mr Malinauskas took turns to flex their muscles and pitch their policies.

Both leaders were asked a series of questions by moderator and Advertiser columnist Tory Shepherd.

Several topics were canvassed including the COVID-19 pandemic and the unemployment rate.

Mr Marshall addressed general questions about MP behaviour and said standards in parliament needed to be improved, particularly in question time.

“I still do feel that there’s behavioural standards which most people in society think are unacceptable,” he said.

“We need to be a role model for society.”

Mr Malinauskas agreed question time standards needed to be improved.

WATCH A REPLAY OF THE DEBATE

“That’s where I think we’ve all witnessed behaviour and comments that we wouldn’t tolerate our children saying,” he said.

The state’s health system was a hot topic during the debate.

“We don’t accept the ramping which is currently existing in South Australia but there's not one simple solution,” Mr Marshall said.

“We’ve got to make sure that we get better patient flow through our hospital. We’ve got to make sure we have diversion when people don’t need to go into an emergency department and that’s one of the things we’re focused on with things like priority health care centres and also urgent mental health centre that we opened only earlier this month.”

Mr Marshall also acknowledged the Government needed to expand its ambulance service and it had put a “very attractive officer on the table” for the service, referring to Treasurer Rob Lucas’ offer of 50 extra ambulance officers for the service.

The ambulance union wants 300 additional ambulances.

He said the Government had “more than a billion dollars of new capital on the table to expand our hospitals”.

Mr Malinauskas said health was shaping up as “one of the best examples of how the Premier is completely bereft of leadership”.

“We have got a genuine crisis on our hands,” he said.

“People are literally losing their lives as their waiting for an ambulance to roll up, and if it does roll up, it's likely to get ramped.”

Premier Marshall and Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas shake hands at Friday’s SA Press Club debate. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Morgan Sette

Mr Malinauskas noted ramping had doubled during this term of Government.

He also criticised the Premier for not dealing with the ambulance dispute himself, saying he instead rolled out “the Grim Reaper in Chief Rob Lucas”.

“Where’s the premier sitting down at the table with the ambulance officers?” he said.

Mr Marshall also spruiked his proposed $700 million inner city arena, which he announced earlier this week as the centrepiece of his election campaign, saying the project would create jobs.

Mr Malinauskas described the “basketball stadium” as a “nice idea but the wrong priority”.

He championed Labor’s proposed $593 million hydrogen jobs plan, which includes a hydrogen-fired power station, that aims to create jobs and cut electricity bills.

In the end, Mr Marshall went back to basics, saying when the Liberals came to government their focus was on more jobs, lower costs and better services and despite dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government had “never lost sight of our commitment to the people of South Australia”.

Mr Malinauskas said he hoped there would be “a lot more opportunities” to hold more debates in the lead up to the next election.

“Right now, we do have this incredible opportunity, the way we’ve handled COVID-19 as a state really gives us the chance to do something special,” he said.

“We don’t want to look back in 10 years’ time, 20 years’ time, and say ‘well we decided against an amazing opportunity and we turned it into a basketball stadium.”

The debate lasted just over an hour.

The Press Club said at the outset they were not going to score the debate and therefor no winner would be announced.