Paul Starick: Can SA Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas’s honeymoon last until March 19 election?
Stripping away convention along with his shirt, Peter Malinauskas has chosen the perfect time to charm the pants off the electorate, writes Paul Starick.
State Election
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Pumped up by images of him shirtless in a swimming pool and running along the Torrens, Labor leader Peter Malinauskas is in a honeymoon period at an opportune time – just before an election.
Less than two months ago, Labor launched an advertising blitz to boost Mr Malinauskas’s public profile, introducing him as “a husband, a father of three, a weekend gardener, a pretty average football player” and ALP state leader.
Since the election campaign started in mid-February, though, Mr Malinauskas has revelled in being positioned as an alternative premier. He has been jocularly branded the Commander in Beef for displaying his gym-honed upper body during a Labor announcement at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre.
Then he launched a weekly “Hump Day” early morning run along the River Torrens, inviting participants to talk to him about the state’s future.
Mr Malinauskas has been in public life since 2007, when he took over from Don Farrell as the state’s most powerful union official – he was appointed state secretary of the shop assistants’ union.
Since then, he’s been ALP state president and, alongside future Transforming Health architect Jack Snelling, in 2011 tapped the-then premier Mike Rann and engineered his replacement with Jay Weatherill.
Mr Malinauskas was installed in state parliament in 2015, aged 35, and became a minister little more than a month later. Controversially, he was Labor health minister when the Repatriation General Hospital closed in late 2017, even if he in 2019 declared this move a mistake.
But while Mr Malinauskas has long been anointed as a future premier within political circles, he had struggled to forge a public profile since becoming Opposition Leader in April, 2018.
This was, in part, deliberate at first, as he declared Labor must “listen and learn” from losing power after 16 years in office. Then opposition leaders around the country were sidelined as Covid-19 propelled premiers to the spotlight.
Premier Steven Marshall has had more public exposure, thanks to the pandemic, than any SA leader in history. When else would thousands of people watch live press conferences by a Premier?
Importantly, Mr Marshall has been Liberal leader since February, 2013 – more than nine years. He’s expended a lot of energy in that time – this is his third election campaign as leader. This heightens his challenge to capture public attention with his agenda, particularly as people tire of Covid-19.
The pandemic has been the most disruptive event in most people’s lives – when else were they confined to their homes by authorities for days on end? The risk for Mr Marshall is the same as Winston Churchill – win the war but lose the subsequent election.
The Liberals are insisting their campaign is on track, despite a Newspoll published on February 26 showing them at risk of losing. They are trying to re-run the 2004 federal election campaign, in which Mr Marshall’s mentor John Howard trailed Labor’s Mark Latham in all opinion polls at the start of the campaign but trounced him on election day.
But the risk for the Liberals is that Mr Malinauskas is trying to re-run the 2007 federal election campaign, in which a future-focused Kevin Rudd trounced Mr Howard.
Just as Mr Rudd used the Kevin 07 moniker, so Mr Malinauskas dons a sleeveless shirt with Mali ‘22 on the back and Running for the Future on the front. Just as Mr Rudd presented himself as talking about the future to jettison the controversial aspects of Labor’s past, so does Mr Malinauskas. Just as Mr Rudd presented as a fiscal conservative, Mr Malinauskas is from Labor’s economically focused Right – even some ardent Liberal supporters consider him more conservative than Mr Marshall.
Perhaps most alarmingly for the Liberals, there is a similar air of them struggling to land a blow on Mr Malinauskas as there was with Mr Howard’s 2007 campaign. When people have endured lockdowns, it’s hard for the Liberals to appeal to them with past Labor outrages like Transforming Health.
Insiders from the Marshall camp are insisting there is no panic and the Premier is confident of his record on job creation and economic management – just as Howard campaign insiders did in 2007.
There is, of course, a long way to go before the March 19 polling day.
Anecdotally, voters are significantly disengaged. It’s hard to grab public attention when two years of Covid-19 is followed by the worst European conflict since World War II. People have tired of paying attention to governments and politicians. A shirtless, running leader grabs the spotlight.
The big question is whether Mr Malinauskas’s honeymoon will continue – will his body of policy survive the inevitable scrutiny when most voters eventually start to engage and take notice, sometime in the next fortnight?
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