SA election favourite Peter Malinauskas says it’s time to get to work

The overwhelming favourite to become Premier this weekend says his drive to help the state has its origins in a love story from the ashes of World War II.

The overwhelming favourite to be elected Premier within days, Peter Malinauskas wants to remake the state so today’s children can compete in an increasingly complex global labour market

It’s a goal to help people advance prosperity that was fuelled by his grandparents’ love story after they separately fled the Soviet bloc and the ashes of World War II. Eta and Peter were Hungarian and Lithuanian refugees who met and fell in love at a Bathurst migration camp in NSW, then settled in Seaton to run a fish and chip shop.

His grandfather put a pool table in the shop and, as they would play, Peter senior ­offered advice that guides Mr Malinauskas’s political life.

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The Australian love story was one tinged with sadness. His mother was previously widowed at 20 with a baby girl. She had no option but to go to work, eventually finding herself on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain to her daughter and then in faraway Adelaide.

At age 23, Mr Malinauskas found his aunt, Gizus, in Budapest and upon meeting in her in her Soviet era apartment the two burst into tears.

His grandmother was unable to return to Hungary to see her, it was a reminder of trauma but also an affirmation of her love of life in Australia.

SA Labor leader Peter Malinauskas with his wife Annabel and their children Jack, Sophie and Eliza his parents Peter and Kate Malinauskas. Picture: Kelly Barnes

“They actually thought they had won the lottery when they got here,” Mr Malinauskas said of his grandparents.

“It has informed my politics. We would play pool. He would always inject in those conversations how lucky we are to live in this place and how we’ve got to give back. It was ingrained in us.

“My grandmother was a life member of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital volunteers.”

His ideology is inspired by his political heroes, former prime minister Bob Hawke and former US president Lyndon Baines Johnson for his efforts to lift Americans out of poverty. Mr Malinauskas’s thirst to drive change was generated as a teenage student leader growing up in an inner southern Adelaide bungalow, where he now sits at a backyard table talking to The Advertiser while his parents, Peter and Kate, bring sandwiches and cool drinks.

Kate recalls cautioning him about hanging out with the wrong crowd when he brought home some wayward students, shortly before he became Mercedes College school captain.

“And he said: ‘Mum, you don’t lead from without, you lead from within.’ I thought, ‘Oh that’s a big statement from a teenager,’” she recalls.

In recent years, some parents of those boys have ­relayed thanks to her for the future Labor leader helping them put their lives on track.

Eta and Peter Malinauskas.

It’s an achievement Mr Malinauskas, a 41-year-old ­father of three, wants to replicate with a state that opinion polls and bookmakers strongly suggest he will lead after Saturday’s state election.

Asked how he wants a ­Malinauskas government to change the state, he declares: “I want to make sure that a kid going to school today is going to be able to compete in an ­increasingly complex global labour market. Getting a job today means you’re not just competing with the bloke down the street, not just competing with the person interstate, but you’re competing with the person overseas. Right? And if we want to maintain a decent standard of living, the only way we can ­ensure that our kids can compete is that they are reaching their full potential.”

Spearheading this vision is a radical plan to enable three-year-olds to go to preschools with extended operating times – part of complex education changes which a Labor government would establish a royal commission to guide. But Mr Malinauskas’s $3bn-plus big-spending agenda is headlined by $1.2bn over four years for health, including 300 extra hospital beds and 350 more paramedics.

But he has consistently ­refused to outline the budget impact of his spending until Thursday, apart from declaring the $662m earmarked for the Liberals’ Riverbank Arena would be diverted to health.

SA Labor leader Peter Malinauskas with his mum Kate Malinauskas. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The Liberals argue only $78.9m has been set aside in the budget until 2024-25 for the arena – Mr Malinauskas says he will bring forward the unbudgeted $583.1m remainder into that time frame. It’s not clear how Labor will pay for this.

Mr Malinauskas has vowed not to increase taxes, hike fees and charges beyond inflation or sell or outsource anything. He ruled out toll roads, road user charges and bank and car park taxes. But, despite vowing to reinstitute a maximum debt-to-revenue ratio of 35 per cent, Mr Malinauskas left open the prospect of adding to borrowings forecast to hit more than $33bn by 2025.

He did not directly answer the question of whether the public service, as a proportion of the SA economy, was too big, too small or about right. “The answer to that question lies in how effective we’re doing service delivery,” Mr Malinauskas said. “So, in respect to health – too small. Do I think that governments have a responsibility to constantly scrutinise the efficiency and the productivity of the labour force? Absolutely.”

Mr Malinauskas rejected Liberal accusations that Labor’s signature election ­policy, a $593m hydrogen power plant proposed for Whyalla, would cost $1.2bn.

He argued the Frontier Economics modelling for the government-owned-and-operated power plant amounted to a business case, saying SA’s abundant wind and solar energy meant green hydrogen could be produced cheaply and exported while creating more than 11,000 jobs.