Pressure is on SA Premier Peter Malinauskas now – and the state’s lifeless Liberals | Paul Starick

Labor looks like an unbackable favourite to retain power next year but SA’s lifeless Liberals aren’t the only ones feeling the heat, writes Paul Starick. Vote in our poll.

If betting firms were offering odds on the state election result next March, Peter Malinauskas-led Labor would be one of the most unbackable favourites in history.

The Liberals barely have a pulse in South Australia after a crushing federal election defeat left them without a seat in metropolitan Adelaide, where they won only seven polling booths.

Another disaster looms in the previously safe seat of Grey, where a Climate 200-backed independent is threatening to topple rookie Liberal candidate Tom Venning as a three-way count unfolds.

Liberal insiders are forecasting another catastrophe at the March 21 state election, raising the spectre of the 2021 Western Australian election, where the party won just two seats.

The form guide suggests the SA Liberals are unlikely to engineer a substantial reversal of their fortunes in the limited time before the election.

Since the Playford Liberal and Country League state government lost office in 1965 – 60 years ago – the Liberals have held power for only about a third of that time.

That is, as University of Adelaide emeritus professor in politics Clement Macintyre says, “the least successful performance of a major party in any of the nine jurisdictions in Australia”.

Labor Senator Marielle Smith, new Sturt MP Claire Clutterham, Premier Peter Malinauskas and Senator Don Farrell at a federal election night event after Ms Clutterham won the seat of eastern Adelaide seat of Sturt. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The Liberals have failed to inspire voters at a state and federal level. There is little time, in SA, for them to suddenly become an engaging force with creative, agenda-setting policy.

Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia has held off substantial policy release until after the federal election.

The June 5 state budget is another milestone, one that gives the government an agenda-setting whip hand.

This leaves a small window to engage a disinterested public between now and the Christmas break.

A more adept and energetic political force should be able to find numerous avenues to attack and outperform the Labor state government.

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It is now clear the Malinauskas government has failed to deliver on central promise upon which it was elected – to fix the ramping crisis.

Another flagship policy – a hydrogen power plant pipedream – has been unceremoniously shelved and its $600,000-a-year boss, Sam Crafter, handpassed into another job – at the same high pay.

Mr Crafter is now state lead, Whyalla Steelworks Industrial Transformation, within the Energy and Mining Department, where he is paid more than the chief executive.

Mr Malinauskas won plaudits for engineering a lightning strike in February to oust Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance from Whyalla steelworks, install administrators and secure a $2.4bn government rescue package.

But the hard part was always going to be securing a new buyer, in an administration process the Premier has repeatedly said he anticipates lasting about 18 months.

Premier Peter Malinauskas, left, and Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia at the March 21 SA Press Club leaders’ debate. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Diverting the $600m budgeted for the shelved hydrogen plan into the Whyalla rescue package has “had a really significant impact on the budget bottom line”, Treasurer Stephen Mullighan said on Thursday.

This, he told ABC Radio, had “been quite a challenge to accommodate”.

Earlier in the week, Mr Mullighan repeated his mantra that there’s no room for more big-spending projects beyond the $15.4bn South Rd tunnel project and the $3.2bn new Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

“We are having to put off other projects, which I think a lot of people in the community could see a need for,” he told FIVEaa, singling out a new Pathology SA facility.

At the same time, business trading conditions have slumped to their worst level since the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a South Australian Business Chamber survey.

Mr Malinauskas is no fool.

On Tuesday, he fired off a thinly veiled warning to his troops.

He bluntly declared “complacency is death in politics” and “that assuming one election result informs the next is foolish”, because “in the modern world … things move quickly”.

It is highly unlikely, though, that the state political climate will change quickly enough for him to lose office next March.

Originally published as Pressure is on SA Premier Peter Malinauskas now – and the state’s lifeless Liberals | Paul Starick