Peter Malinauskas might be the only South Australian not betting on a Liberal election wipeout | David Penberthy

With pundits tipping the Liberals to win as few as 4 seats come March, you’d think the Premier would be breathing easy, writes David Penberthy. Have your say.

There are two sayings which Premier Peter Malinauskas uses to remind his troops – and himself – that nothing can ever be taken for granted in politics.

In an interview at the end of last year – a political year marked by not one but two history-making Labor by-election victories and complete chaos in Liberal leadership and party ranks – Mr Malinauskas said he remained wedded to the bleak warnings contained in these two quotable lines.

As suits his life interests, one comes from the world of leadership, the other from Aussie Rules.

“There is a quote to live by from Andy Grove, the former long-time chief executive and driving force at Intel,” Mr Malinauskas said.

“Success breeds complacency, complacency leads to defeat, only the paranoid survive. Grove said it in the context of business but it’s way more applicable to politics.

“The other saying I got from footy. Things are never as bad as they seem but they’re never as good as they seem, either.

“I have not enjoyed the breadth of experience of others in politics but I have seen enough to know that a bit of paranoia doesn’t hurt.”

Premier Peter Malinauskas and Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia. face off in March’s SA Press Club leaders' debate. Picture: Brenton Edwards

It sounds counterintuitive, but if Mr Malinauskas was worried last December after such a politically successful 2024, he must be really terrified now.

The Liberal Party for all intents and purposes has just been wiped out as a federal force in suburban Australia. The cataclysm is at its worst for them right here in SA.

From Gawler to Goolwa, Henley Beach to Highbury, Semaphore to Skye, you can drive in any direction north, south, east and west across the entire expanse of suburban Adelaide without entering a single Liberal seat. That’s because there aren’t any.

As part of the miserable bargain they almost lost Grey, the sprawling rural electorate which occupies almost the entirety of the SA bush.

This would have left them a one-seat wonder, with the South-East seat of Barker the only Liberal seat left.

There is a parlour game being played now among SA’s journalists which goes like this – how many seats will Vincent Tarzia and the Liberals hold after the state election next March? Actually that’s not quite right – some of the Liberals are even doing guesstimates too. (No Labor person is silly enough to tempt fate by doing so.)

The lowest I’ve heard is that they will hold four seats, losing nine. This would mean that every suburban electorate, be it Colton in the coastal west, the eastern seat of Morialta and even leafy, bourgeois Unley will turn red, as the women of Hyde Park in their Lorna Jane gear and their chambray-shirted husbands embrace the socialist lurking within.

I know for a fact that Mr Malinauskas is genuinely worried by the supposed inevitability of all this.

He doesn’t think it is inevitable at all. Even though the numbers electorally look beyond absurd, he remains genuinely convinced that something unexpected could occur.

In the past two weeks his message to his team has been that the first sign of complacency equals political death.

There has also been a keener eye being brought to bear on how the government’s performance is being reported in the media.

TELL US WHY IN THE COMMENTS

A few government spinners – lovely people all of them, many of whom I worked with when they were journos themselves – have been contacting news producers politely asking why shadow ministers have been given a run on negative stories without government input.

This is a new thing, as far as I can tell, and one worth sharing.

The idea that the Tarzia opposition is being given a rail’s run in the media is of course completely laughable.

Often they get a run out of politeness or even pity. Their chief problem remains one of relevance. They’re the ones who are struggling to get a run anywhere, for three reasons.

The first is that oppositions always do struggle because they aren’t actually in charge of anything.

The second is that they have a dearth of staff versus the crowded media-management teams across every portfolio at both the ministerial and departmental level.

The third is that this opposition still needs to get more or indeed any headline-grabbing policies out there so they actually have something to talk about.

The last point couldn’t be more urgent given the election is just months away, when no-one if pressed can actually think of anything significant the Liberals are proposing to do.

It’s not like the government hasn’t given them some material to work with.

I would have thought that failing to honour your two biggest promises – fixing the ramping crisis and a state prosperity plan framed around green hydrogen – might give your opponents something to beat you around the head.

But empirically, there are no signs of any momentum away from the government at all.

None.

Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia speaks at the SA Press Club leaders' debate. Picture: Brenton Edwards

And much of that comes down to Mr Malinauskas himself.

Rusted-on Liberals will baulk at the assertion, so don’t take my word for it, but reflect on those Advertiser vox pops in Sturt and Boothby, where when random voters were asked if they preferred Albanese or Dutton as prime minister. Most of them said they’d rather have Malinauskas

And this, weirdly, is what worries Mr Malinauskas the most.

He fears that this sense of inevitability could fuel voter ambivalence, and even encourage a sympathy vote which turns into something more substantial for the seemingly hapless Libs.

He also believes (as does every commanding premier from Beattie to Bracks to Carr) that the media are overcompensating in prosecuting his failings due to the absence of opposition tenacity.

So if you really want to upset him, tell him that after the year he had in 2024, and with Albo’s historic trouncing of the Liberals two Saturdays ago, there is absolutely no way, not a snowball’s chance in hell, that Labor can lose or even go backwards at the 2026 state election.

Originally published as Peter Malinauskas might be the only South Australian not betting on a Liberal election wipeout | David Penberthy