Premier Peter Malinauskas’s rare misstep in personal attack on Frank Pangallo | Paul Starick

Bombshell opinion polling showing Peter Malinauskas heading for a historic landslide has fuelled a rare misstep from the popular premier, Paul Starick writes.

Shockwaves from a bombshell opinion poll showing Peter Malinauskas charging towards a historic landslide are reverberating across the state.

Labor clearly has been emboldened by the extraordinary 67-33 per cent two party preferred lead uncovered in a YouGov poll, published by The Advertiser just nine months before the state election next March.

Mr Malinauskas might be determined to douse any hint of arrogance from his troops but he is facing intensifying accusations of exactly this from his opponents. He has given them some rare ammunition with a uncharacteristic overreach.

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Facing the terrifying prospect of being left with just two seats, the Liberals are promising to unveil a star candidate – speculated to be prominent upper house independent Frank Pangallo.

This potential candidacy, in the southeastern Adelaide seat of Waite, has triggered a firestorm in a teacup.

Premier Peter Malinauskas at a press conference on Tuesday. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Mr Malinauskas on Tuesday accused the Liberals of reaching “a new state of desperation” as he unleashed a rare personal attack on Mr Pangallo.

“This is not a face of the future of our state, in an election that is about the future. I mean, every election is about the future and the best that the Liberal Party can offer for the future of our state is Frank Pangallo. That tells you everything you know about where they’re at,” the Premier said.

Mr Pangallo has a rare ability to sell a message with a snappy turn of phrase, honed by his years as a tabloid TV and newspaper journalist.

He accused Mr Malinauskas of playing “the ageist card” – Mr Pangallo is 71 – pointedly noting he was a few months younger than the Premier’s “shoppies union bestie mentor” Don Farrell, the federal Trade and Tourism Minister.

“I will wear it as a badge of honour to be mocked by our glass-jawed Premier Peter Malinauskas, whose arrogance and ego is beginning to look and sound a lot like Chairman Dan Andrews,” Mr Pangallo fired back on Facebook.

Independent upper house member Frank Pangallo (centre) on March 1 at a dig site on Mooringie Ave, North Plympton, where a team was searching for the Beaumont children’s remains. Picture: Emma Brasier

This might be rare colour in state politics but it is a sideshow rather than the main game.

Having suffered extreme brand damage at state and federal level, the Liberals need to work out what they stand for to regain any voter support.

Mr Malinauskas has a point. Whether or not Mr Pangallo would make a talented candidate, he cannot rebuild the Liberals into a credible force by himself.

The Liberals have become somewhat obsessed with trying to tear down Mr Malinauskas by portraying him as an arrogant Party Premier – more concerned with hanging out at LIV Golf and AFL Gather Round than growing jobs and prosperity.

This ignores the obvious fact that people are voting with their feet and dollars by flocking to these events. This support includes the young people who the Liberals have lost in droves – the YouGov poll showed them behind both Labor and the Greens among 18 to 34-year-olds. This is a disastrous result.

Rather than just suppressing arrogance, the challenge for Labor is developing courageous plans for using a majority that is set to be huge.

Treasurer Stephen Mullighan (left) and Premier Peter Malinauskas arrive for the state budget media lockup on June 5. Picture: NewsWire/Dean Martin

Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, in a thoughtful speech on Tuesday to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, extolled the reformist courage of the Howard and Hawke/Keating governments.

Mr Mullighan said his federal counterpart Jim Chalmers’ roundtable in August would be “a critical opportunity for our country, not just for GST and tax reform, but to address the challenges facing our country”.

“Too often governments are worried about spending political capital. But real reform should be seen as investing political capital. Invested to deliver a return,” Mr Mullighan told a Committee for Economic Development of Australia lunch.

He referred obliquely to rising cost pressures, economic problems and waning productivity, asking whether we would “tackle the challenges of real reform in our country” or “spend another year lamenting the lack of progress”.

Put simply, that’s the choice ahead for him and Mr Malinauskas.

Originally published as Premier Peter Malinauskas’s rare misstep in personal attack on Frank Pangallo | Paul Starick