Labor set to snare historic win in South Australia

The South Australian Liberal Party is in total disarray with Peter Malinauskas confirming his ascendancy by becoming the first Premier to win a by-election from government in SA in 116 years.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Kelly Barnes

The South Australian Liberal Party is in total disarray with Labor’s Peter Malinauskas confirming his ascendancy by becoming the first Premier to win a by-election from government in SA in 116 years.

In a dismal result with national ramifications as the Liberals seek to retrieve affluent seats lost to the Teals, middle class voters in the eastern suburban seat of Dunstan abandoned the Liberals in droves.

The Greens vote in the seat held for the past 14 years by retiring ex-premier Steven Marshall almost doubled from 13.7 per cent at the 2022 election to 22 per cent on ­Saturday.

Barring a miraculous Liberal comeback through pre-poll and postal votes, Labor’s Cressida O’Hanlon, who had 53.8 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote on latest counting, is assured of victory thanks to the strong flow of Greens preferences to the ALP.

The result is ominous for ­federal Liberal MP James Stevens who holds Christopher Pyne’s old seat of Sturt, which overlaps with Dunstan, on a margin of just 0.45 per cent, almost the same as Mr Marshall did after the 2022 election.

The Greens have vowed to mount an all-out assault against Mr Stevens at the next federal poll.

The Dunstan result shows that even if Labor’s primary vote falls – as it did on Saturday – the flow of Green preferences and the corresponding collapse in the Liberal primary vote means Labor cannot lose.

The traditional Liberal vote evaporated in some of Adelaide’s most expensive suburbs with Labor ahead in booths such as Kensington, Joslin and Trinity Gardens which historically have only ever voted Liberal.

The win confirms the personal popularity of Peter Malinauskas who despite failing so far to honour his promise to fix ambulance ramping is being marked up by South Australians for bringing new life to SA and running a centrist Labor Government.

The Liberals tried to paint Malinauskas as “Party Pete” over his support for the AFL Gather Round, LIV Golf and the return of the V8 Supercars, but the Dunstan result suggests South Australians are enjoying the party.

But it is the collapse in the Liberal vote which is the story of the by-election, coming in a week when the party turned on itself with conservative senator Alex Antic rolling the state’s most senior female Liberal Anne Ruston for the number one Senate spot.

Both Labor and the Greens campaigned heavily and successfully on that issue in a seat which is home to many middle-class, well-educated female voters.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young personally letterboxed every home in Dunstan this week denouncing the treatment of Senator Ruston by the Liberal’s right wing.

“The Liberal Party have a woman problem,” Senator Hanson-Young wrote to households.

“This by-election, it’s time to send them a message. The SA Liberals have just chosen an ultraconservative male backbencher to lead their senate ticket over a more experienced and capable female shadow minister.

“After all this time, the Liberal Party still don’t get it and women are still being sidelined and silenced. We are sick of the blokes calling the shots and it’s time for change.”

The huge Green vote was also fuelled by what Liberal and Labor powerbrokers are now describing as a misjudged mud-slinging campaign between Cressida O’Hanlon and Liberal candidate Anna Finizio over their family’s business interests.

Speaking at what felt like a victory party on Saturday for Greens candidate Katie McCusker, Senator Hanson Young said the Greens would take the momentum from Dunstan to target Sturt, the only federal seat the Liberals hold in suburban Adelaide.

“Tomorrow our campaign in Sturt begins,” she said.

“James Stevens, Peter Dutton’s candidate, should be worried. Voters in the eastern suburbs are sick of the mudslinging and want better.”

Opposition Leader David Speirs took the extraordinary step of apologising publicly for the result at the Liberal’s downbeat by-election “party” at the Robin Hood Hotel.

“The results tonight are not looking that promising for the Liberal Party,” Mr Speirs said.

“Both major parties have seen a fairly significant fall in their primary votes, there’s been a big shift towards the Greens.

“That’s going to make our pathway to holding this seat exceptionally difficult going forward.

“For that result, I apologise. I am really sorry that it is as difficult as it might be.”

Mr Speirs will inevitably face questions over his leadership and may even be challenged this term with eastern suburbs MP Vincent Tarzia emerging as a threat.

But it is the internal factional brawling which is a bigger problem for the Liberals with furious recriminations already underway about the impact of last weekend’s Antic-Ruston battle on the Dunstan result.

“Take a bow Alex your work here is finished,” one moderate figure told The Australian by text message yesterday.

However party conservatives are blaming the moderates for picking “Labor Lite” candidates who offer no major point of difference from the ALP.

One source said Dunstan would not have been winnable for Labor if former Premier Steven Marshall had not almost lost the seat himself in 2022, holding on by just 260 votes when the Liberals were reduced to just one term in office.

The same source said the moderate-backed Dr Finizio was not helped by revelations that she had applied for a job with the Labor Party just two years ago as a policy adviser to Attorney-General Kyam Maher.

“We need people who are much more demonstrably committed to Liberal values,” the source said.