Albanese no Malinauskas: Australian Prime Minister dismisses impact of SA loss

Scott Morrison says Anthony ­Albanese is nothing like popular Labor premiers, as he distances the federal government from the Liberals’ disastrous ­loss in SA.

Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail with Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Emma Brasier

Scott Morrison says Anthony ­Albanese is nothing like popular state Labor premiers, as he distances the federal government from the Liberal Party’s disastrous ­result in the South Australian election.

The Prime Minister said Saturday’s election was “fought on state issues” and played down claims that incumbency was no longer an advantage in the Covid era.

“The federal election will be fought on federal issues. And what I know is that Anthony ­Albanese is not Peter Malinauskas,” Mr Morrison said.

“He’s the federal Labor leader. And one thing that I’ve 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. (West Australian Premier) Mark McGowan’s a good example of that.”

Liberal MPs in the state, however, are warning that the Adelaide seat of Boothby is on track to be won by Labor, while there were growing concerns about Sturt.

Conservative MPs are concerned that Mr Morrison had become too left-wing and was at risk of alienating the Liberal base the same way Steven Marshall did.

“He has got to make some bold choices and they need to come from his conservative instincts,” one Liberal said.

South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic – who has refused to vote with the government in parliament over vaccine mandates – said the Prime Minister should take the lesson of what happens when Coalition leaders move too far to the left.

“It shows that when voters elect a Liberal government, they do not expect that government to deliver a left-wing agenda,” he told The Australian. “It also serves as a timely reminder in advance of the federal election that you must, as president (Ron­ald) Reagan famously said, ‘Dance with the one who bring ya’.”

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham – leader of SA’s moderate faction – said the federal government was bracing for Mr Albanese to mimic SA Labor’s “misleading” scare campaign on health.

“We can’t underscore the potential for Labor to run these types of scare campaigns, just like they did with Mediscare against us back in 2016, and particularly when they can roll out the public sector unions to devastating effect,” he told ABC’s Insiders.

With federal Labor’s 2019 election loss partly blamed on a focus on progressive social issues, SA senator Don Farrell said Mr Malinauskas went “back to basics”.

“Fixing health, providing jobs; that clearly works,” he said.

The opposition tourism spokesman and a Right faction powerbroker, Senator Farrell encouraged Mr Malinauskas to the labour movement when the premier-elect was a 23-year-old retail worker at Woolworths.

Senator Farrell was the state secretary of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, the right-wing union that forms Mr Malinauskas’s power base.

“I instantly saw this bloke had potential and I offered him a job,” Senator Farrell said.

Labor Senate leader Penny Wong – the most senior South Australian in the federal parliamentary party – said Mr Morrison was a “drag on the Liberal vote here”.

“I saw numbers that suggested that one in two South Australians were less likely to vote for Steven Marshall, when they were reminded that he and Scott Morrison, were of the same party,” she said.

Federal Labor strategists are buoyed by Mr Marshall’s failure to portray Mr Malinauskas as wanting to secretly raise taxes, which is a similar tactic being used by the federal government on Mr Albanese.