Labor’s electoral clean sweep an ominous warning for SA Libs

Labor’s victory in every federal electorate in Adelaide has put the South Australian Liberals at risk of a comparable obliteration at the looming state election.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas, left, and Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Labor’s clinical clean sweep of every federal electorate in Adelaide has put the South Australian Liberals at risk of a comparable obliteration at the looming state election.

Amid the huge popularity of Premier Peter Malinauskas, and with new Liberal Leader Vincent Tarzia struggling to break through after his predecessor was convicted on drug charges, SA Labor carries massive momentum on the eve of its re-election campaign.

Peter Malinauskas was elected premier in 2022 consigning Steven Marshall to just one term in office and there are fears in Liberal circles that Labor will significantly improve its position at the state election next March.

New Liberal Leader Vincent Tarzia struggling to break through after his predecessor was convicted on drug charges. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Labor won eight seats off the Liberals in 2022 leaving the Opposition with just 16 of 47 seats in the Lower House, and some Liberals now believe the party could be left with as few as four seats at next year’s poll.

The woes of the SA Liberals mirror those of the party federally with the fledgling Mr Tarzia failing as yet to produce any memorable policies which are resonating with South Australian voters.

More ominously for the Liberals the historically fractious party has become an even bigger factional basket case in the past 12 months, fighting internal wars over abortion laws and with hardline conservatives rallying around Senator Alex Antic as he rolled Senator Anne Ruston for the number one Senate spot.

This mayhem has coincided with a collapse in electoral support against a Premier in Malinauskas who governs from the centre, with Labor scoring two historic by-election victories last year by snaring the seats of former Liberal leaders Steven Marshall and the cocaine-using David Speirs.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas and Labor's Claire Clutterham, the new member for Sturt. Picture Mark Brake

Malinauskas played a high-profile role in this federal campaign and on its cusp worked closely with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese crafting the $1.8 billion rescue package for the Whyalla steelworks.

Despite being from opposite sides of Labor’s ideological divide, former Right Faction convener Malinauskas has become a close friend and confidante of the Prime Minister and hailed his landslide victory as proof that people underestimated Albanese at their peril.

“It’s a theme,” Mr Malinauskas told The Australian.

“Everyone consistently underestimates this bloke. Every time this guy gets underestimated he proves them wrong.”

Mr Malinauskas refused to take personal credit for the result even though several Labor candidates and its entire Senate ticket used images of the Premier rather than the PM in their campaign material.

“The results are remarkable but I think that it’s important that everyone just focuses on getting to work,” he said.

Mr Malinauskas said the big lesson from Saturday night was that the political centre was “back”.

“I hope so, and you see it not just in this result but the Canadian result,” Mr Malinauskas told The Australian.

“One of the first things the new Canadian leader did was jettison some of those policies that were a bit out there.

“The same with Albo. He hasn’t cooked up retrospective tax increases. He hasn’t been woke. He hasn’t been out there.

“It’s a result that reflects where the Australian electorate is at. They don’t want to see obsessions with the culture wars. They want to see a focus on routine policy work.”

Mr Malinauskas said he was personally heartened by the defeat of Greens MPs interstate and their failure to make any inroads in SA, citing this as further evidence of an alignment around centrist values.

“You know my politics so with these Green losses it won’t be a surprise that I’m particularly happy about that,” he said.

The South Australian Liberals reached their nadir at the Robin Hood Hotel in the middle-class Norwood on Saturday night where James Stevens conceded defeat in Sturt, for four decades the stronghold of Fraser era minister Ian Wilson and then the high-profile moderate Christopher Pyne who held multiple ministries in the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Governments.

Sturt is now a 10 per cent Labor seat with Labor aggressively targeting Stevens as a do-nothing member, the result supporting the assertion as he suffered a much greater swing against him than other SA Liberal candidates.

Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia was at the Robin Hood Hotel where as Stevens conceded Mr Tarzia toiled valiantly in arguing the federal result would have no bearing on the looming SA campaign.

“The federal election has been fought on federal issues and I think people can distinguish between federal issues and state issues,” he said.

“We are just working hard every day now to hold the Labor Party to account and continue to put our alternative vision forward for the people of South Australia for March 2026.”

There was a symmetry to the Liberals gathering at the Robin Hood Hotel for Saturday’s debacle, where every single suburban electorate across Adelaide is now held by the ALP.

This was the same pub where former premier Steven Marshall conceded defeat on the Saturday night of the 2022 poll, and was heard telling staff “get me the f*** out of here” as he marched out towards his car.