Samantha Maiden: Peter Malinauskas declares he won’t play quokka for anyone
Bright-eyed and bushy tailed he might be, but Peter Malinauskas reckons he won’t be anyone’s quokka, writes Samantha Maiden.
SA News
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Scott Morrison once declared that smiling Premier Steven Marshall looked so permanently and unnervingly delighted that he reminded him of a sweet-natured marsupial.
“If Steven was an animal, he’d be a quokka,” the Prime Minister said. “The happiest animal in the world.”
“If you are having a bad day, ring Steven Marshall and you’re going to feel great at the end of it.”
Sadly for the Liberal Party at least, the 2022 South Australian election turned out to be a very bad day for the nation’s most loved wallaby.
Perhaps, smiling while voters endured the November 23 border reopening just as Omicron cases surged and the ambulance ramping fiasco unfolded isn’t always the best strategy?
Who could blame the outgoing Premier in such circumstances, after a dignified and magnanimous concession speech, for walking off the stage and declaring in earshot of journalists that he wanted his staff to “get me the (expletive) out of here.”
Godspeed, Steven. Godspeed.
But it was South Australian Premier-elect Peter Malinauskas who observed on Sunday that he had one promise to voters as premier, he would never be “ScoMo’s quokka”.
“If there are examples of where the federal Coalition wants to do something good by our state, I will acknowledge it,’’ Mr Malinauskas said.
“But I’m not going to be ScoMo’s quokka either. If they do something I don’t agree with, I will stand and fight for our interests.”
He added that the same rules would apply to Labor if Anthony Albanese wins government at the coming federal election.
So, what federal implications arise from the historic toppling of a first term government in South Australia?
The first observation to make is that the demise of the Marshall government is the first post-pandemic electoral loss for an incumbent government.
All of the issues that incensed some voters – the lack of RAT tests over summer, the long queues for testing, the ruined summer holidays, also apply to the Prime Minister.
The ambulance ramping fiasco was also intertwined with the Omicron outbreak.
That’s bad news for the Morrison government, but it won’t necessarily translate into the seats Labor needs to win government in South Australia alone.
Here’s why. Labor is already at a high water mark for support in South Australia. Labor won the popular vote in the state at the last election securing 50.7 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.
The Liberal Party did pick up a modest swing, however of 1.56 per cent again on two-party preferred basis.
There’s only one Liberal-held seat that’s generally mentioned in SA as a possible Labor gain at the 2022 federal election and that’s Boothby.
For years, we’ve been told it would tumble but it has remained in the embrace of the Liberal Party since the 1940s.
But on the basis of the state election result the Liberals will be nervous, and rightly so, given the Liberal MP Nicolle Flint is retiring and the new candidate Rachel Swift is an unknown quantity.
However, Labor is also keeping a careful eye on the federal seat of Grey. That seat includes regions in the state seat of Flinders, where independent candidate Liz Habermann secured a stunning 21 per cent swing at the weekend.
At the moment, she’s on a two-party preferred vote of 45 per cent compared with the Liberals’ Sam Telford on 55 per cent.
So, she won’t win it but she’s given the Liberal Party a scare. Now, there’s speculation she could run at the federal election for the seat of Grey, currently held by Rowan Ramsey.
“It’s got to the point where it is, dare it I say it, a boys’ club and we’re sick of it,’’ she said.
“We’re just not going to stand back any more and wait for them to diddle daddle on. We’re going to get in there and sort things out.”
If she does decide to run she might not win Grey but could force the Liberals to put more resources into the seat – or even pull off a surprise victory.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who appears to be rapidly moving towards the bargaining stage of grief, has been keen to tell voters that they can have their Labor premier cake and a Liberal government at the federal level as well.
“What I know is that Anthony Albanese is not Peter Malinauskas, he is not any of the other premiers, he is not Annastacia Palaszczuk. He is none of these other premiers,” Mr Morrison said on Sunday.
“One thing they have noticed is there is a big difference between Anthony Albanese as the federal Labor leader and what we see in the performance of some of his state colleagues.
“Mark McGowan is a good example of that. Anthony Albanese is no Mark McGowan. That is for sure.”
We shall see. With the budget due next week and Australians going to the polls shortly after, judgment day on whether the Prime Minister will be smiling on election night or instead facing the grim, lonely fate of the quokka is not far away.
samantha.maiden@news.com.au
Originally published as Samantha Maiden: Peter Malinauskas declares he won’t play quokka for anyone
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