Deep trouble, or deepfake? Big question remains at heart of David Speirs saga
While it’s hard to find a South Australian who is buying ex-Liberal leader David Speirs’ explanation for extraordinary stills and videos that emerged this week, in this digital age it is all but impossible to know who is telling the truth.
They are the type of seedy images that normally feature a football player in a nightclub toilet or a fallen Hollywood star who has descended into a drug-addled abyss.
These images featured the man who just one month ago was the alternative premier of South Australia, former Liberal leader David Speirs, at what looked like a particularly loose evening at his Kingston Park home.
Extraordinary stills and video emerged this week purporting to show the now-backbencher audibly snorting white powder through a rolled-up $5 note and standing in his kitchen with several lines of powder cut up on a plate with a credit card.
More extraordinary still is David Speirs’ response to all this – the whole thing is a lie.
He insists the images are “deepfake” fabrications, says he has “never, never, never” taken drugs, and suspects the images may have been manufactured by someone who obtained access to his home while he was out of the country.
The video and images were taken between 4.12am and 6.32am at Speirs’ southern beachside residence on June 30, with the then opposition leader still managing to attend a press conference that morning denouncing the SA government for applying payroll tax to GP clinics.
Around that time, rumours were circulating that Speirs – who raised eyebrows by missing the state budget this year to attend a cousin’s wedding in his native Scotland – was planning to skip the opening of the spring session of parliament to attend another cousin’s wedding, also in Scotland.
With those claims bubbling away, Speirs abruptly quit the leadership in early August, saying he’d “had a gutful” of the leaking and sniping.
Having angrily denied plans to attend a second wedding – even claiming its very existence was a fabrication by his enemies – he admitted after he quit that another cousin was indeed tying the knot and that he would be flying out to Glasgow to attend, later posting a selfie to social media wearing a kilt at the reception and captioned “Family Comes First”. This cheeky moment was a pointer to further mischief from the now rogue backbench MP.
Since quitting, Speirs has proven himself an irritant and distraction for new leader Vincent Tarzia and the SA Liberals as they trudge through their latest round of bloodletting.
He has publicly toyed with quitting the Liberals, saying he would struggle to serve under Tarzia whom he regards as a leaker; he then complained Tarzia did not offer him a position in shadow cabinet; only last week, he said the SA Liberals were such a basket case that, like the NSW branch, they too should come under federal control.
And this week, with Vincent Tarzia trying to shift the focus to ambulance ramping and power bills, the new leader was instead fending questions about whether his predecessor had a drug problem or was the victim of an elaborate digital hoax.
Based on the emphatic reassurances he had received from his predecessor, Tarzia said he had to believe Speirs’ deepfake claim.
“David’s made it very clear to me that that’s just not him,” Tarzia said. “I’ve got no reason to think otherwise.
“I asked him point blank: ‘Is this footage fake?’ He said: ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘Well you need to report that to the authorities’ and that’s what I’m hoping he does.”
The bizarre case prompted amazement on the Labor side in SA and eye-rolling among Liberals who are sick of the party’s continuing capacity for distraction and self-absorption.
The extent of the Liberals’ woes in SA has national ramifications, with a national poll by Sydney agency wolf + smith showing this week Labor’s vote holding up very strongly in SA at 60-40 two-party preferred.
Federal Labor figures are delusional if they attribute any of this to the performance of the Albanese government; it is all on the popularity of Peter Malinauskas, his standing bolstered by the haplessness of his local opponents. And the awkwardness of it all was magnified for the Liberals with this week being a sitting week and the party forced to seek a pair for the low-lying Speirs when the story broke on Tuesday.
The electors of Black were represented that day by an empty chair, its absent occupant on full pay, apparently hiding out somewhere in regional SA.
Malinauskas captured the scepticism of the state when asked whether there should be a police investigation if the images were deepfakes.
“There’s a big ‘if’ there, isn’t there?” the Premier said.
On Wednesday, the pressure of it all became too much for Speirs who issued a statement taking indefinite leave from politics due to the impact the scandal was having on his wellbeing.
“I left the leadership of the party as I had run out of energy and the feeling of burnout has been compounded in recent days,” he said.
“As a consequence, my emotional health and wellbeing has been significantly impacted, leaving me feeling exceptionally vulnerable and at risk.”
Speirs remains convinced the images have been doctored and said he would also be using his time away to consider his legal options.
The Australian understands that no complaint has been made to SAPOL about his deepfake claims and that police do not intend to launch an investigation without one.
As harrowing as the week has been for Speirs, it has also been of benefit to the SA Liberals. As Speirs takes time off to rest and recover, his status as party renegade comes to an immediate end. The expectation now is that he will maintain a low profile for the remainder of this term and most likely walk away from politics at the 2026 election. He is not expected to become an independent; indeed, whatever animus he felt towards some colleagues will have dissipated this week with many Liberal MPs maintaining close contact with him out of sincere concern for his welfare.
While it has been a big week in Adelaide for the raising of eyebrows and rolling of eyes, in this digital age a big question remains at the heart of this story.
What if David Speirs is right?
What if he has never taken drugs in his life and the whole thing has been fabricated to do him harm?
We live in a time where it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between facts and fiction in the online space.
Former Sunrise host David Koch is suing financial scammers for doctoring his image in sham advertisements that have lured unwitting people into making payments and losing their savings.
When the first photos emerged of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July, blood running down his face and a defiant fist clenched in the air, many people believed their composition was so perfect that they must have been fake.
This week, the internet has been abuzz with an AI-generated video showing Trump, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and others doing battle in an American ghetto, their ripped bodies covered in gangster tattoos.
While the video is clearly a comic creation, it is notable for the seamless digital rendering of the politicians involved.
It remains hard to find a person in South Australia who is buying David Speirs’ explanation as to what transpired that night. But if his explanation is true, he has just become the first politician in world history to have his career destroyed and reputation shattered off the back of a deepfake.
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