How Vincent Tarzia won the South Australian Liberal Party leadership | Paul Starick

A backroom move by a key bloc of Liberals put Vincent Tarzia in a near-impregnable position to take over as Opposition Leader.

Vincent Tarzia’s ascension to the Liberal leadership confirms the party’s takeover by the Right faction, which handed him the crucial numbers for victory.

Three Liberals were vying for the Opposition Leader’s job after David Speirs suddenly quit on August 8, pointedly declaring he’d “had a gutful” of being undermined and lacked the energy to fight on.

Deputy leader John Gardner and fellow frontbenchers Vincent Tarzia and Josh Teague all put their hats in the ring.

Newly installed Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia (left) and John Gardner at a press conference on Monday morning. Picture: NewsWire / Ben Clark

All three hailed from the Moderate faction, which controlled the party apparatus in South Australia for years after a recruiting push of Young Liberals started by a relatively youthful Christopher Pyne about 20 years ago.

But the Right, which controlled the SA party during the Howard government under the astute leadership of federal frontbencher Nick Minchin, has re-emerged in recent years as a dominant force.

A recruitment campaign spearheaded by controversial Senator Alex Antic has swollen membership, handing numerical support to Right faction leader and federal Barker MP Tony Pasin’s bid to re-engineer the party.

Even though the new Right has seized control of the state Liberal machinery, it does not have a majority in the 22-member state party room.

Senator Alex Antic and the-then Opposition Leader David Speirs at the Liberal Party headquarters in 2023. Picture: Brett Hartwig

But the two crucial developments that determined the leadership were revealed by The Advertiser on Saturday.

Mr Tarzia publicly revealed he would nominate for the Opposition Leader’s job, frustrating Mr Gardner’s hopes of avoiding a ballot on Monday morning.

Behind the scenes, Mr Teague continued to canvass support – with little success, as it turned out.

The second, most important, development was the Right, or conservatives, declaring its nine members were “disciplined” and would vote as a bloc.

This catapulted Mr Tarzia to favouritism. He had been cosying up to the Right for more than a year, with an ambitious eye to a future leadership bid.

The conservatives were never going to back Mr Gardner, who they viewed as a capable parliamentarian but spurned as a Moderate spear carrier.

Mr Teague, having secured just five votes when Mr Speirs was elected with 18 at a 2022 ballot, was always going to be a bit player, not a key contender.

The Right bloc’s support, confirmed on Sunday night, meant Mr Tarzia, assuming he voted for himself, needed to secure only two more votes to win a majority.

Assuming Mr Teague secured at least his own vote if he remained in the contest, Mr Gardner could, at best, hope for 11 votes.

By Monday morning, Mr Gardner recognised that pressing ahead would, at best, trigger a close, divisive result – so he withdrew from the contest to act as the loyal deputy.

The ballot went ahead at 9am on Monday, in the Opposition party room on the North Tce side of Parliament House.

From just outside, the mood sounded quite jovial – there was a sprinkling of laughter and applause during the 20-minute meeting. Mr Tarzia won the contest with 18 votes, to Mr Teague’s four.

The state Liberal leadership team on Monday morning. From left – Jing Lee, Vincent Tarzia, John Gardner and Nicola Centofanti. Picture: NewsWire / Ben Clark

The result was a significant milestone in Liberal politics in SA. The Moderates have controlled the party room for some time.

Former leader and premier Steven Marshall, who headed the state party from 2013 until 2022, was ushered from business into politics by the Moderates.

On the eve of the 2022 state election, though, he conceded in an Advertiser interview that his ministry had not achieved factional balance in the past 12 to 18 months.

Some conservatives – Liberal and crossbenchers – were privately hostile to Mr Marshall, believing his Moderate faction froze them out of cabinet.

They accused him of behaving like a Labor Left premier for pushing social reforms on abortion and euthanasia.

Critics of the Antic/Pasin recruitment and reform push branded them as extreme Right warriors, beholden to fundamentalist Christians and aping Donald Trump’s bombastic rhetoric.

Their supporters counter by arguing they have corrected the imbalance Mr Marshall described and recreated the “broad church” Liberal Party, including both Left and Right groupings.

In particular, they argue, they have brought mainstream Australians back into the fold, which had been the preserve of a narrow clique drawn from the ranks of political staffers.

Regardless, the Right is now in control. They are the power behind the Tarzia throne – the group that handed him the uncertain prize of leading the South Australian Liberal Party.

Originally published as How Vincent Tarzia won the South Australian Liberal Party leadership | Paul Starick