SA’s non-woke Labor bloke Peter Malinauskas showing the way for the ALP in state election fight
He’s a non-woke bloke who plays footy, cites Bob Hawke as his hero, spruiks the expansion of the middle class, and connects with mainstream South Aussies.
He’s a non-woke bloke who plays footy, cites Bob Hawke as his hero and says Labor’s ultimate policy goal should be the expansion of the middle class. At a time when centre-left parties are struggling to remain connected to the mainstream, South Australian Labor leader Peter Malinauskas might be showing the way.
There are still two weeks to go in the state election campaign but on current polling the 42-year-old Catholic and former Right faction boss has a real chance of up-ending Steven Marshall’s Liberal government after just one term.
Such a result seems unthinkable given it is just four years since Marshall put an end to Labor’s marathon 16-year rule.
But over the past two years of Covid, with time becoming something of an abstract concept, Marshall goes to the polls amid fractious debate about his pandemic management.
Marshall is Australia’s longest-serving Liberal leader, holding the position since 2013. But he is squaring off against Australia’s longest-serving opposition leader, the only one to survive the pandemic by taking the smart path of avoiding constant potshots and day-to-day commentary on the government’s performance as it launched a public health battle everyone wanted it win.
By being largely bipartisan and often even silent during Covid, and back-ending his campaign with announcements aimed at points of Liberal weakness, Malinauskas may become the first leader in Australia to oust a sitting government as incumbency shifts from a blessing to a curse.
The prospect of a Malinauskas victory is not merely due to timing, but also the fact he has been charting a centrist course resonating with many voters.
His campaign so far has had a family feel, with Malinauskas often being joined by his wife Annabel who is a partner at an Adelaide law firm, and their children Eliza, 1, Jack, 4, and Sophie, 6, who introduced her father at Labor’s campaign launch.
His positive standing was underscored in an extraordinary Newspoll last Saturday putting him a hefty seven points clear of Marshall as preferred premier, 46 to 39, only the second time in Newspoll history that such a result has been achieved by an opposition leader on election eve.
The Liberals are determined to paint Malinauskas as a career politician with no life experience, a union hack whose chief contributions to public life so far were a brief and ill-starred stint as health minister, and as the factional assassin who knifed former Labor premier Mike Rann in 2011 to make way for Jay Weatherill.
Malinauskas gave Rann his marching orders in his capacity as Right faction boss during his seven year-tenure as SA and NT secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association.
The union, better known as “the shoppies”, has long been linked to Labor’s so-called Catholic Right through figures such as national SDA president Joe De Bruyn and SA senator (and Kevin Rudd executioner) Don Farrell.
Rann’s knifing was an audacious move for the then 31-year-old Malinauskas, but bore fruit three years later with Weatherill holding on as Liberal Marshall lost what was regarded by many as the unlosable 2014 election.
Farrell preceded Malinauskas as SDA secretary and has been his confidante and champion for almost 20 years, telling The Weekend Australian he has long believed he has what it takes.
“I first met Peter when he was working part-time as a shelf-stacker at Woolworths in Mitcham while he was studying commerce at Adelaide Uni,” Farrell said.
“I was told that he would be very good working for the union. He was likeable, smart and charismatic. I arranged to have a coffee with him and decided immediately to give him a job as a recruiter.
“Being a recruiter is a tough job. You have to be able to convince people who often don’t want to be convinced. Not only do you need selling skills, you need to be able to take knockbacks. Soon enough Peter ended up being our top recruiter.”
Despite his Catholic upbringing and education – head prefect at Adelaide’s mid-priced Catholic school Mercedes College – Malinauskas is representative of the less doctrinaire thinking that now defines the SDA, voting in favour of abortion and euthanasia bills.
Catherine Alcock was principal of Mercedes from 1998 to 2004 and first met Malinauskas when he was one of four designated student leaders in Year 11.
“At my introduction to the student leadership, Peter immediately lobbied me about issues for and needs of students, with one significant issue being that there had never been any footy goalposts on the main oval,” Alcock said.
“His lobbying was successful as during 1998 the goalposts were duly installed. A further item for students for which he lobbied was the installation of vending machines so students could get some sustenance after school, especially if they were engaging in sports.
“As principal I had regular fortnightly meetings with the student leaders.
Peter would come to these meetings with a list of items for discussion, including suggestions for improvements for students based on his discussions with students. His agenda was to enrich and improve student life at the College.
“He was always logical and reasonable and aware that a due process had to be worked through before change and improvement could occur. As a student leader he never thought that he was better than the other students; but he was there for them and with them.
“A few years ago I met Peter at the funeral Mass for Adelaide Archbishop Leonard Faulkner, not long after he had become Leader of the Opposition. I commented to him that where he was now was a long way from footy goalposts. Peter responded: “The principle is the same’.
“His view of leadership is to work for the needs and requirements of your constituents, whether it be the students or the people of South Australia.”
Malinauskas comes from solid middle-class stock, growing up in the picturesque inner-southern suburb of Colonel Light Gardens where grand Federation homes sit on sprawling 1500sq m blocks.
He has an ingrained hostility towards the Socialist Left, in part a familial legacy from his paternal grandmother Eta, a Hungarian who fled Soviet rule in the 1950s and moved to Bathurst, where she met and married Lithuanian refugee Peter Malinauskas, a Lithuanian refugee, with whom she moved to Adelaide and opened a fish shop.
He has taken positions which jar with progressive orthodoxy. As SDA secretary he argued for the abolition of payroll tax, denouncing it as a tax on jobs (a position he no longer holds). As Labor leader he has enraged the Australian Education Union by announcing that, if elected, he will give principals the power to sack underperforming teachers.
When interviewed by The Weekend Australian about his vision, he made no reference to social justice or progressive causes, but said he wanted to draw on the Hawke legacy by creating a pro-business environment that would underpin jobs and expand the middle class.
“Ultimately the Labor Party must stand for an increasingly accessible and growing middle class that is becoming more prosperous,” he said.
“The culture wars occupy the minds of a lot of people. I don’t speak to too many people in outer suburban Adelaide or regional SA who are worried about them.”
Treasurer Rob Lucas, a 41-year political veteran who is bowing out of politics, is having none of it, urging voters to look past the facade of Malinauskas as an economic conservative.
He says the level of Labor promises in the campaign – set again Malinauskas’s promise to meet projected state budget surpluses – should set off alarm bells.
He said the SA economy had turned around and diversified in record time over the past four years and could not afford risking a return to Labor.
“Under Premier Marshall’s leadership, for the first time ever we have the fastest growing economy in the nation, we’ve delivered record high employment and young people are returning in droves because of the ample new opportunities on offer here in growth sectors such as defence, cyber and space,” Mr Lucas said.
“The last thing in the world SA needs right now is an L-plate leader, an ex-union boss who has never held an economic portfolio in his life, putting all that at risk,” he said.
The Lucas attack is undermined by the fact that, in preparing this profile, key business figures including SA’s peak business body gave glowing assessments of their dealings with Malinauskas.
He has one other thing going for him, which makes zero sense outside of SA but is redolent with meaning here.
When last Saturday’s Newspoll was published, former SA Liberal MP conservative independent Sam Duluk explained Malinauskas’ stunning numbers with these words: “It’s the Bob Neil effect.”
Neil is the knockabout everyman who has been declared the official club legend of the University of Adelaide Football Club, The Blacks, a 236-game veteran whose 20-year career started in 1974.
The sacred words “Bob Neil” appear in the club’s merchandise and Blacks players have been photographed with placards bearing his name at test matches in England and in front of famous tourist landmarks across the world.
In Adelaide, playing for the Blacks is a bit like Fight Club for the city’s affluent male middle class, a vast network of like-minded blokes who have played right through from their uni days into adult life.
Footy-mad Malinauskas is also a member of the University of Adelaide Football Club – The Blacks – notching up 200 games over the past 20 years.
Duluk is also an ex member of The Scum, so named due to their lowly division, and typical of the many people who while being conservative can still bring themselves to describe Malinauskas as a good bloke.
And in another example of his hostility to wokeness, it was Malinauskas who spoke out when some Adelaide University members floated the idea of renaming The Blacks on race grounds. The Labor leader dismissed the idea as PC nonsense that ignored the fact that the name derived from the colour of the club jumper.
After almost every game he has played, Malinauskas has made a point of hanging around not just with his teammates but seeking out his opponents for a chat or a beer. Come March 19, in a small town like Adelaide where everyone knows everyone, that may prove fruitful.
Duluk’s assessment of the Bob Neil effect may yet be proven right.
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