South Australian Premier Steven Marshall’s reign may depend on crossbench support

Steven Marshall’s SA government has been disappearing before his eyes, likely leaving him at the crossbench’s mercy in his quest to retain power.

Steven Marshall’s battle to retain office has been made harder by the fact his government spent much of the past 12 months disappearing before his very eyes.

It has been an indulgence the South Australian Liberals have been ill-equipped to afford, given their 2018 victory was not the landslide one would expect after Labor ruled uninterrupted for a whopping 16 years, the final few marred by fatigue and scandal.

The Liberals won 25 of the 47 seats in South Australia’s House of Assembly in 2018, just one more than required to form a majority.

In a messy 12 months, the party saw three of its number vanish to the crossbench last year, forcing the Premier to rely increasingly on the support of independents to maintain power.

First up was Yorke Peninsula-based Narungga MP Fraser Ellis, charged last February with 23 counts of deception arising from his alleged misuse of the country travel allowance, charges he vehemently denies and will contest in court later this year.

Then came Waite MP Sam Duluk who announced he would not attempt to rejoin the Liberals in August last year after being found not guilty of assaulting SA Best MLC Connie Bonaros at a 2019 parliamentary Christmas party, with magistrate John Wells offering a withering assessment of his drunken boorishness, despite his acquittal.

Late last year, the member for Kavel Dan Cregan sensationally quit the party, accusing it of neglecting the Adelaide Hills, an area with a strong appetite for independents as evidenced by the seemingly unshiftable Rebekha Sharkie in the federal seat of Mayo.

Each of these three MPs is ­running as an independent.

While few on either side give Mr Duluk a chance of holding due to the headline-grabbing nature of his scandal, Mr Ellis and Mr Cregan have a strong chance of being returned. Neither man now has a warm relationship with the Liberal Party.

And even if the Liberals picked up all three of these seats on March 19, they still do not improve on their 2018 position.

With three other independents in the mix – former Liberal Troy Bell and Labor-leaning Geoff Brock and Frances Bedford – there is an even greater chance that whoever “wins” office in South Australia next month will not have a clear majority.

Dan Cregan

Fraser Ellis

This is an ominous scenario for Mr Marshall in a state where Labor under both Mike Rann and Jay Weatherill formed government with the support of rural and conservative MPs.

There is an expectation Mr Cregan – who was installed as Speaker with the backing of Labor after his defection – would be prepared to support a Labor government in return for increased support for Hills voters.

The arm wrestle to win a clear majority will largely be a suburban one. If either side is going to govern in its own right, it must do so by picking off key seats across the Adelaide Plains.

The dream scenario for the Liberals is that they pick up two Labor-held key city seats and one in the regions.

The first is the most marginal but probably the toughest – Mawson, the southern Fleurieu Peninsula seat held by the knockabout former journalist Leon Bignell, who pitches himself more as a country independent than a product of the Labor machine.

The second is the northern suburbs seat of Wright, held by opposition education spokesman Blair Boyer. And the third is the increasingly affluent inner southern seat of Badcoe, where sitting member Jane Stinson has become a virtual recluse amid Liberal claims of staff bullying, and an extended leave of absence due to an unrevealed health condition.

 

The mood surrounding the election suggests that such a result is the stuff of Liberal fantasy.

The few published polls point to a tight race; there is now greater public and business rancour over the management of the pandemic, and the federal Liberals are adding lead to Mr Marshall’s saddlebags.

All this suggests the challenge for the Liberals is to hold what they have and keep enough of the independents in the tent to remain in office.

Labor’s path to victory hinges on four seats, all of which it must win to have any chance of governing in its own right: the prized city-based seat of Adelaide, the inner southern seat of Elder and the ultra-marginal northern suburbs seats of Newland and King. One wildcard factor in these northern suburbs seats is the government’s axing of the V8 Supercars race, a hugely unpopular decision in these blue-collar parts of Adelaide where the VN Commodore is regarded as a luxury vehicle. While at just 0.1 per cent Newland is the most likely to fall, the Liberals are placing great store in the capacity of Paula Luethen to do the improbable and hold King, hailing her as a suburban battler in a similar mould to Jackie Kelly.

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas, with his daughter Eliza, and Adelaide Labor candidate Lucy Hood, with her son Ned, at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre in North Adelaide. Labor has announced plans to redevelop the site if they win the March election. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Labor’s big hope of a boilover is in Adelaide where the party is benefiting from the tactical wisdom of installing candidate Lucy Hood a full 18 months ago.

Ms Hood, who left journalism to become a staffer for various senior MPs in Labor leader Peter Malinauskas’ Right Faction, has been campaigning as if she’s the local member, holding frequent street corner meetings and attracting huge party support.

The incumbent, Rachel Sanderson, a nervous performer in the child protection portfolio, seems plagued by a surfeit of niceness, and has been wrong-footed by Labor’s fear campaign around high-rise development in the ­Adelaide Parklands.

The toughest seat to shift will be Elder, where Liberal MP Carolyn Power continues to enjoy residual empathy over the racially inspired campaign Labor ran targeting her over her Arabic maiden name at the 2014 election.

The spectre of that episode was revived last year with the former Labor member for Elder Annabel Digance and her husband Greg awaiting trial on criminal charges of threatening to blackmail Mr Malinauskas.

Even without gaining a fifth seat, a clean sweep of these four city seats puts Labor on 23.

That’s still one seat shy of a majority, but likely at level-pegging or a greater number of seats than the Liberals, given the spread of independents.

The battle then will come down to haggling skills. In 2014, Mr Weatherill famously wooed country independent Geoff Brock into the Labor tent over a ham and pineapple pizza at the A1 Pizza Bar in Port Pirie. It might take more than that to form government in South Australia this time.