With a state election looming on March 21, South Australian Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia has stepped down, citing a wish to focus on his family and local community and denying he had been undermined, and denying knowledge of recently reported efforts to have him make way for Shadow Health Minister Ashton Hurn. The Advertiser reports a statement from Hurn says only that she “will be speaking with my colleagues ahead of a party room meeting”. The deputy leader, Josh Teague, “shrugged off questions of whether he would put his hand up”.
UPDATE (6/12): The Advertiser (which reported this morning that Ashton Hurn was almost certain to be elected leader unopposed after Josh Teague said he would not contest) reports a poll conducted by new-ish outfit Fox & Hedgehog from November 24 to December 5, thus of little use in gauging the temperature after Tarzia’s departure, had Labor leading 61-39 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of Labor 41%, Liberal 21%, Greens 12% and One Nation 13%. Peter Malinauskas was rated positively by 51%, neutrally or uncertainly by 25% and negatively by 19%, compared with 17%, 36% and 25% for Tarzia (the balance saying they had never heard of them), with Malinauskas leading 54-18 on preferred premier. Ashton Hurn recorded 10% positive, 29% neutral and 12% negative.
Pauline Hanson recorded the highest approval out of a number of federal politicians canvassed at 38%, though partly this reflected high name recognition, with 24% neutral and 36% negative. Anthony Albanese scored 33%, 24% and 41%, Sussan Ley 16%, 35% and 29%. Further results for Penny Wong, Don Farrell, Alex Antic, Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, together with detailed voting intention breakdowns, are featured in the full report.
It’s bad.
They aren’t even trying any more.
Quick. Business Opportunity. Any Minor or Third Party willing to become the Official Opposition. Your Time is Now!
I know the loons are getting excited about Victorian Labor’s issues or the idea that they hold onto Tasmania so they can bankrupt it…but really, how is the Liberal Party ever to rebuild itself nationally if it hollows out in all major states.
Gosh, didn’t see this one coming. Tarzia standing down this close to the election when polling’s so dreadful for the SA Libs, that pretty much ruins Ashton Hurn’s leadership prospects as well if she picks up this poison chalice.
He should at least have had some decency and stay it out as leader until the election.
Oh, Tarzia only holds his seat of Hartley by 3.8%. That’s probably going to flip at this stage.
Ashton Hurn’s seat of Schubert meanwhile has a margin of 11.8%. At this rate she’d be lucky to hold on to that one.
Hurn’s seat is regional. I think the swings probably won’t be as sharp outside of the metro area. She should hold on. Especially as she is locally connected to the area. It’s not just some safe seat she was parachuted into.
Mali has now seen off three Opposition leaders in four years. Is this a record?
Dutton, Saunders, Battin, Pesutto, Speakman, Castley, Spiers, Pesutto, Ley, Sloane, Groth, Morris, Parton, Hanson, McCormack, Joyce, Ley, Finnochiaro, Maley, Zempilas, Mettam, Davies, Love, Rundle, Tarzia, Teague, O’Brien, Guy, Crisafulli, Southwick, McLeish, Bleijie, Maley, Higgins, Littleproud, Hogan, Davey,
The Toorak Toff @ #5 Friday, December 5th, 2025 – 3:30 pm
In the 2006-10 term under Rann, the Liberals elected three different leaders:
Iain Evans (2006-07)
Martin Hamilton-Smith (2007-09)
Isobel Redmond (2009-13)
Vic has had 3 in 12 mths but I guess you mean SA ? It’s fun isn’t it! https://antonygreen.com.au/9012-2/
Premier Fabio has failed everywhere – ramping, Green steel (dont laugh), green hydrogen, geothermal power. Highest power prices in Australia but the property prices have sky rocketed just like they did in 2002-2006. That is why he is so far ahead, crazy but true. It also have sky rocketing public service and a declining population.
Kirsdarke
“ He should at least have had some decency and stay it out as leader until the election”
+1 Its a bit cowardly IMO. The new leader won’t have even had a budget reply speech to outline their platform before the election.
Premier Fabio failing at everything isn’t quite right, he at least is in the running as the most beautiful man in the cosmos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHSw89y9dzk
Yeah, add me to that chorus. If Tarzia didn’t have his heart in it, he should’ve stepped down months ago to give his successor a chance to establish themselves in the role. As it stands, his successor (most likely Hurn) will have no time to cut through to the voters. Everyone is going to be focused on Summer and holidays.
This is a selfish poisoned chalice because Tarzia doesn’t want to be the guy that led his party to an embarrassing defeat.
Considering what they’re facing, the Liberals should instead be focusing on sandbagging their seats. Run on the local level, each MP and candidate effectively being the central focus of the campaign in each seat, with leaders and party identity being downplayed. Do what you can to try and limit the bleeding. Instead, Tarzia’s running like a coward and, once again, a woman who has decent future prospects in her own right is going to be thrown in front of the bus, in the vain hope some furniture might be saved.
OTOH, to put a potential positive spin on it for Hurn and the Liberals, what they’re facing will make them think outside of the box and have to be innovative and tireless. If they decide to go all in with nothing to lose and fight like their lives depend on it and they can end up maybe clawing a little bit of ground back, it will be a morale boost and reflect well on Hurn (and a long term strategy under her.)
Don’t know how likely that is but I wanted to try and see a potential flipside to this.
As for the long term future, it just takes one bad week to turn an untouchable government who looks like they would be in power forever to it suddenly being vulnerable. So who knows?
I do wonder if it might be better for the Liberals if they simply don’t have an official leader running up to the election?
It’s been done a few times with minor parties, like the Greens in NSW who don’t have an official state leader.
Or otherwise run one from the Upper House? At least so that Ashton Hurn has a clear go for the 2026-2030 term if nobody else from the Lower House is willing to play out this farce for the next 3 and a half months.
“So devoid of talent they aren’t going to have a leader” sounds horrendously bad optics for a party built on authoritarian hard man politics.
Does that make the ACT leadership change a prologue followed by two major episodes before a delay until the third one? A bit like the Godfather films…. Nobody can quite work out why the third one has happened and it is a bit of a disappointment?
Pretty much sums the election up.
Its going to be a bit difficult to criticise “Premier Fabio” if the Liberals don’t actually have a leader of their own. The counter-attack writes itself.
Wat Tyler @ #13 Friday, December 5th, 2025 – 4:46 pm
Yeah true. If there’s a bad fire season this summer in SA for instance then that would change things. And with there being lots of Spring rains this year growing a lot of undergrowth that’ll dry out by January then that does make it a possibility.
Paul James Baker
Do you know that Peta Credlin likes Premier Fabio? She said that a Labor leader should be like him when he was elected as Premier.
Are you saying Peta Credlin and Sky after Dark are wrong about Premier Fabio? 🙂
When NSW, VIC and ACT Libs changed their leaders, when the new leaders of NSW and VIC are women, I asked whether there is a woman in SA Libs, who can replace Tarzia.
Ven @ #21 Friday, December 5th, 2025 – 6:24 pm
Yeah, Ashton Hurn. But only giving her three and a half months to establish herself before the election is a massive handicap that’ll more likely than not damage her credentials if she leads the SA Liberals to a WA 2021 style defeat.
IMO, I think Liberals across federal and state domains are electing female leaders to address the “women’s problem.
Another reason is that the male leaders turned out to be duds.
https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/bloody-howard-new-research-identifies-where-liberal-partys-women-problem-began
“Bloody Howard: New research identifies where Liberal Party’s ‘women problem’ began
25 August 2025
Key points
Federal Liberal Party’s ‘women problem’ can be traced to policy shifts under former Prime Minister and Liberal leader John Howard
The party of choice for women for most of the 20th century, the Liberals achieved important milestones for gender equity in Australia
The party must return to its ‘small l’ liberal roots to win back the support of women voters
The Liberal Party’s ‘women problem’ can be traced to Howard-era cultural and policy shifts that ended its standing as the party of choice for women for most of the 20th century, according to new research from Monash University.”
I bet Mali is to the right of Hurn on almost every issue except unions, and Mali hasn’t been a huge friend for unions.
Mali’s list of failures is very long and most of them have been serious. He is clearly a nice, well meaning guy who people like working with (I have never heard a bad word about him as a person).
Also I’m in agreement with the sentiment that this is the Sky After Dark crowd led by Alex Antic and Tony Pasin that all this is a method to flush the SA Liberals of their moderates and replace them with rabid MAGA dogs for preselections in 2030.
Teague is under pressure to hold his seat too. ALP putting in some effort. He has 4pts to play with. But I know there is a war chest built up before the new rules. Not sure they know the best way to use it.
Diogenes @ #24 Friday, December 5th, 2025 – 6:24 pm
I think Malinaukas is probably a little more economically left-wing than Hurn (but by no means a socialist or anything like that) but socially, for sure. Reminds me of when there was the abortion debate a few years back and many of the Labor figures in the debate sounded more reactionary than their Liberal counterparts. I feel that, as the current realignment continues, that will become less so.
Still, it speaks volumes about how much things have progressed that, at the last election, Labor went out of its way to hide Malinauskas’s socially conservative views. Back as late as the early 2000s, he would’ve worn that stuff on his sleeve.
Actually, forget early 2000s, he probably would have as late as the 2010s. After all, remember, a part of Labor’s strategy in 2010 was to out-conservative Redmond and the Liberals, portraying her as a soft-on-crime, pro-drugs candidate and desperately pandering to the Family First crowd, including the notorious fake HTVs. They threw away their inner-city support to keep the socially conservative Tom Kenyon around (allowing Steven Marshall to enter parliament), which he dutifully repaid later by defecting after he no longer got his way in the intra-party debate on abortion.
Talking of SA….I tend to look at the much bigger picture when judging the success or failure of Governments. ….In my opinion, having lived here over 60years, SA is doing about as well as I have ever seen it. The place is humming along. The dark dark days of the State Bank are a distant memory. The city is unrecognizable fro the ‘town’ it was in the 1970s. Its a true international, cosmopolitan city with a vibrancy unknown in previous eras.
Sure ramping is the perennial issue brought up time and time again….and sure it does really need serious attention. But as a frequent and constant ‘customer’ of health services having multiple chronic conditions ….which are managed with aplomb and professionalism, I cant speak more highly of our health system and its staff of professionals. The equipment, and facilities are outstanding…..it is first world care provision….No doubt under enormous budgetary constraints. I visit three different hospitals….Lyell McEwin, RAH and Modbury hospitals
Living in Australia and in Adelaide in particular we lose site of what an amazing place this is and whinge too much about minor things….and considering that Labor has been in power in SA for most of my adult life, bar a couple of minor interuptions, this place I call home has been a product largely of the efforts of THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY, of whom Mali is just the latest manifestation
Thankyou The Albonator at 8:10. Labor since the Dunstan days myself and having a laugh at some of those here professing to know something of S.A. politics. The Gov’t is polling well, there are cranes above every Hospital in Adelaide and surrounds, there is infrastructure boring ahead and the economy is sound. And very few realize that South Australia is a great place to live. The Government will be returned and the Conservatives are, here like everywhere else, in total disarray.
I grew up here in the 1990s. I can attest to what a dead-end town this place was back then (especially thanks to the double whammy of the State Bank collapse and the exodus of manufacturing.) Things have definitely improved since then. Still a lot to do, especially economically, to keep people here and avoid brain drain. Housing costs and health issues are a problem, and we still have to exorcise that NIMBY spirit that still infects this place but generally it’s a lot better here now. It used to be the goal was to leave and all the jokes and slurs about Adelaide were 100% accurate – now they’re just tired routines from interstaters who think hating on this place is a good personality substitute.
I’ve been here 58 years. I think we used to suffer as we compared ourselves to Melbourne, which is such a basketcase we look and feel good. We never compared ourselves to Sydney.
I know some people very high up in mining and it is going the same way as our manufacturing industry. That isn’t anyone’s fault. That is a global shift.
Honestly, does anyone think if Mali got run over by the proverbial number 64 bus that Kouts or whoever would come close as a popular leader. Farrell will keep pushing for Mali to be SA’s first PM.
Diogenes @ #32 Friday, December 5th, 2025 – 8:54 pm
While there are people in the Labor ranks who might be able to make a name for themselves if they took over, Koutsantonis would be a disaster. A greasy, horrible weasel who is very easy to dislike. If he became Premier, my sincerest pre-emptive congratulations to the Liberal leader on winning the following election.
Wat
We only have one top 50 Australian company and we would have lost that if more energy concessions were put on the table.
It’s really expensive here. Mean house prices are more than Melbourne.
Blair Boyer seems the best but he is Left aligned. There isn’t a lot after Mali with Mullighan gone.
Diog,…..politics and personalities are peripheral to the actual GOALS of politics and good governance and that is the construction of a society….and in that SA is supremely successful
WA Liberals had four leaders in the 2005-8 term (and won).
Just noticed that Selena Uibo is now Australia’s most senior Opposition Leader, with 15 months in the job. Steven Miles has 13 and all the rest have changed since March this year.
Mullighan never did it for me. He’s a little too much of an empty suit for me. And his personal politics makes Peter Malinauskas look like Don Dunstan in comparison.
“ Diog,…..politics and personalities are peripheral to the actual GOALS of politics and good governance and that is the construction of a society….and in that SA is supremely successful”
I can’t agree with supremely successful.
It’s a great place if you are middle class and we have a decent sized middle class but there is a whole another world in northern Adelaide. If you travel 30 minutes from Medindie north, your life expectancy drops 21 years. It’s pretty tough up there.
I have lived in Salisbury and Elizabeth….and most cities on Earth have their version of Elizabeth…..I would still rather reside there than say The Bronx or even Sunshine in Melb….we do ok here Diog….
Albo
21 year life expectancy is not acceptable. That is a failure of policy (state and fed)
Of course its not acceptable….But it would be a hell of a lot worse if SA had continued to stagnate and become an Alabama of Australia, or the north of England….with the headwinds that SA has faced for 50 years we have done remarkably well…..we could have been an absolute basket case. We arent and we make steady progress toward improvement and I utterly reject pessimism and ignoring all of the real progress being made
Unlike Victoria, no one will beat the South Australian Labor Leader next year. Only way he could lose if he decides to resign. He is unbeatable.
Meanwhile in Victoria Labor still thinks policies will win it a fourth term, sorry no chance.
I don’t have the map on top of my head so forgive me if I miss some seats, But I tip the Liberals to be almost completely wiped out, They will lose Colton, Unley, Hartley, Morialta, Heysen, Morphett, Bragg with Frome and Hammond too close to call (Frome has been renamed and an incumbent Labor MP is running so scrap that, It’s probably a likely Labor gain also)
Hammond and Schubert are too close to call,
The only safe Liberal seats will be Chaffey, Mt Gambier (Gain), Flinders and Finniss (assuming no independents take them)
Kavel will be a Labor gain if Cregan retires which I believe he is.
Mackillop should be regained for the Libs. And if Geoff Brock retires I suspect his seat will go Labor marginally.
So thats only 5 Liberal seats for sure, and possibly 7. I don’t see them getting anymore than 8, 8 would be a good night for them at this rate.
Labor will win 39 seats, but 40 is absolutely possible if the Libs have a complete meltdown and Labor have a shock victory in one of the seats.
Basically WA 2021 all over again but Labor has slightly less percentage of seats in SA than WA.
Still this will be the largest majority government in SA history by far, at least in a century.
While I agree it is an absolute dog act for Tarzia to bail at the end of the year less than four months out from the election, rest assured (and despite what he and the Liberals were claiming ad nauseam in the media yesterday) he was absolutely pushed. He did not just wake up and decide to walk away from the best paid and highest office in his party “to spend more time with his kids.”
It looks like their internal polling must be so diabolical that their only hope of avoiding a wipeout is a leadership change. Tarzia presents in the media like a wet rag compared to pretty boy Pete. I mean I do not know what the Liberals were thinking when they chose him; I never thought Tarzia would make it to the election when he first got elected but I also did not think he would bail this close!
The Liberals would have known Tarzia’s seat of Hartley has been gone for months. I expect their polling started showing seats like Schubert also falling. That is much less likely to happen if the new Liberal leader happens to hold that seat come March. They are trying to avoid another Kirkup or Dutton style humiliation.
I do agree this handicaps Hurn’s future prospects as leader. It will be a massive job just to get through this election, let alone stay on for four years and try to win in 2030.
On another note, I am honestly surprised at how much apathy toward Malinauskas’s leadership I am seeing in this thread. A nice change. I got piled on in the last SA thread when I pointed out his lack of policy and vision, but hey, he sure makes up for it in good looks and charisma!
And just a note on @Diogenes saying people like working with Mali because you have not heard otherwise. Well, no, you wouldn’t as the average punter. But the list of Labor resignations is growing by the day. The current Speaker Leon Bignell is the most recent and makes five by my count. That’s about 13% of the state party room which is not insignificant, especially given the ascendancy of the party right now.
21% of the party room of the even more ascendant Western Australian ALP retired at the election there in March.
Tony Barry thinks the de facto opposition after the SA election will be Labor’s socialist left faction.
Socially and economically Malinauskus is quite conservative. I have met him once through work and at a personal level he is genuinely engaging, courteous and friendly. He is no policy reformer – quite the opposite. Weatherall was the reformer and Malinauskus has been the beneficiary.
Behind the scenes state departments I have worked with are looking at long term issues but there is no appetite to engage with them publicly.
Some of the economic issues Dio referred to are driven by Federal policies beyond state control. Of the state level issues SA is traveling comparatively well at present and house prices reflect a comparative desire to move here. One of my Qld based nieces and her husband are seriously considering moving to SA and buying a home here because they can’t afford what they want in Brisbane.
Personally, having grown up in Qld and moved to SA twenty years ago, for me life here is excellent. I think the state bank era was a disaster but Labor since has done a great job repaying the debt and getting the state moving again.
And regardless of Labor leader, as long as Alex Antic runs the SA Liberals, Labor is safe in a well educated state that sees Antic’s dogmatism as political poison.
aggmagpie
I know lots of people who have met Mali and like him. I don’t know about his MPs though.
He really hates Ashton Hurn. And I imagine it’s mutual. It will be a bruising campaign.
He really hates Ashton Hurn. And I imagine it’s mutual. It will be a bruising campaign.
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That would make her a clever selection if she can bait some of that emotion out of Malinauskas.