With less than three weeks to go before the formal campaign period, the pace is picking up ahead of the March 21 South Australian election, including one particularly notable development overnight:
• One Nation announced yesterday that its Legislative Council ticket will be led by Cory Bernardi, who held a South Australian Senate seat from 2006 to 2020. Bernardi served as a Liberal until 2017, when he quit to form the short-lived Australian Conservatives. The party was abolished after its failure at the 2019 election, and he quit the Senate in January 2020. He has since maintained a profile as a conservative pundit and Sky News presenter. Bernardi’s elevation requires the demotion of the existing candidates on the ticket, which was to be headed by Victor Harbor councillor Carlos Quaremba. The party says it will field candidates in all 47 seats: its website currently records 31 lower candidates, together with three (soon to be four) for the upper house.
• Labor’s new candidate for the safe inner northern Adelaide seat of Enfield is Lawrence Ben, principal economic adviser to Peter Malinauskas. Ben fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Andrea Michaels, the Labor member since 2019, who last week announced she wished to return to her legal career. Michaels has served in the ministry since 2022 in consumer and business affairs, small and family business and the arts, the latter placing her at the centre at the recent imbroglio around the removal of Randa Abdel-Fattah from the Writers Week event at the Adelaide Festival.
• The Advertiser reports on a poll of the seat of Mount Gambier, which has been vacant since independent member Troy Bell resigned in September after the failure of his appeal against a fraud conviction. The poll records 23.1% support for independent Travis Fatchen, an electorate officer to Bell who is running as an independent. This is presumably exclusive of a 22% undecided component, which would effectively put Fatchen at 30%. A “hypothetical preference distribution” records Fatchen with a two-candidate preferred lead of 61.7-38.3 over Liberal candidate Lamorna Alexander. We are further told Labor is on 17% and that “conservative support was split between the Liberals, One Nation and independent Cody Scholes”, presumably suggesting each is on around 12% or 13%. Also included was a preferred premier question showing Peter Malinauskas with a 49.6-13.8 lead over Ashton Hurn.
• Other notable independent candidates include Port Lincoln business owner Meghan Petherick in Flinders, whose prospects have been rated highly by Aden Hill of The Advertiser; Matt Schultz, director of international recruitment at Flinders University and president of the Mount Barker Football Club, in Kavel, where he has the endorsement of outgoing independent member Dan Cregan; Airlie Keen, manager of Dan Cregan’s electorate office, who will run again in Hammond, where she polled 15.7% in 2022 and fell 306 short of reducing Labor to third place; and Claire Boan, mayor of Port Adelaide Enfield, in Port Adelaide, which will be vacated with the retirement of Susan Close.
• Former One Nation MLC Sarah Game’s Fair Go for Australians party has changed its lead upper house candidate for a second time. The ticket will now be led by Chris McDermott, the inaugural captain of the Adelaide Crows who played 138 AFL games with the club from 1991 to 1998, who was announced amid great fanfare as the party’s candidate for Dunstan a fortnight ago. He replaces Jake Hall-Evans, managing director of a signage and graphic business and the Liberals’ federal candidate for Hindmarsh in 2019, who will now run in the lower house seat of Colton. The originally named lead candidate was Henry Davis, Adelaide councillor and former Liberal preselection aspirant Henry Davis, who was replaced by Hall-Evans in December, which he claims he first heard of upon reading it in The Advertiser. At around the same time, Davis convened a meeting of the party’s incorporated association, at which he was the only member present, and declared that Game and her key allies were no longer members due to non-payment of their fees.
• The Nationals have announced as their lead upper house candidate Rikki Lambert, a former chief-of-staff to Victorian federal MP Anne Webster and Bob Day during his time as a Family First Senator. Lambert has run as an Australian Conservatives candidate at both federal and state elections. Port Lincoln councillor Dylan Cowley will run for the party in Flinders, while party state president Jonathan Pietzch is the candidate for MacKillop.
Hello Bludgers!
Long time, no see.
There was a bit of media a while ago about Frances Bedford making another tilt at Florey.
Does anyone know whether this is the case?
Personally I thought it was a bit mad for her to shift from Florey to Newland at the last election.
Name recognition alone would have given her half a chance, but I suspect too much time has elapsed now for her to win it back (if, indeed, she is running).
The reason why she did that was that her whole campaign for reelection last election had to do with Modbury Hospital, and so when the hospital was drawn out of Florey and into Newland she then jumped ship.
Duelling Murray Bridge announcements really sum up the campaign as it stands.
Liberals yesterday announced $7 million for an upgrade to the maternity ward at the local hospital.
Labor today announced $15 million for the upgrade of the maternity ward (plus renal service expansion), $50 million for a new technical college, $33.8 million for transport expansions, $8.6 for a school upgrade and even a new home for Bertha the bunyip.
Hammond sits on a 5.1% margin for the Libs, clearly Labor smell blood in the water- or a bunyip….
SA election will certainly be an interesting litmus test as to what extent the ON vote actually holds compared to what the polls are showing. Clearly many people dissatisfied atm but would suspect the polls will overplay their actual election vote as people actually consider what (probably little) they are actually offering. If Pauline was actually half-competent they would probably be much stronger.
Yeah I suspect the party might not make any inroads at all in terms of House of Assembly seats. The real tests are going to be in Victoria and New South Wales.
I can’t see PHON doing well in the SA election. They don’t even have a state leader, unless Bernardi is now considered to be, which won’t help them much.
State politics is 90% about running services well. Ideology doesn’t matter much.
Agree Diog:….SA is the ultimate Urban election…..SA is Adelaide and not much else. If they cant make inroads in the cities which I doubt, then SA has SFA outside of the metro area
I think Bernardi will be elected to the Upper House. Quotas are small and the primary vote you need to get to have a chance to reach a quota via preferences is even smaller. But I will be in spite of, not because of him. I think a lot of people underestimate how much party name, not candidate identity, does most of the lifting in Upper House elections. Even if One Nation underperform expectations, they probably still have enough support amongst those who’ve previously been responsible for the likes of Family First getting elected. If they could do it in 2022, I don’t see why they wouldn’t in 2026 (and then some.)
New Not-A-Poll in sidebar at https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au : How many seats will the Liberal Party win in the SA state election?
New Not-A-Poll in sidebar at https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au : How many seats will the Liberal Party win in the SA state election?
Sorry for the double-up there, I attempted to delete the first one unsuccessfully.
The South Australian Liberals have promised new stamp duty relief for home-owners looking to downsize if they win the March election, while Labor has pledged to transform a hospital into an aged care precinct. Under the Liberal pre-election policy, South Australians over the age of 55 could be eligible for a one-off $15,000 concession on stamp duty to move into a smaller home under $1.2 million. Party leader Ashton Hurn announced the policy, designed to “create movement” in the housing market, at the Liberal’s official campaign launch at the Adelaide casino on Sunday. Ms Hurn said the stamp duty concession would cost $46 million over four years. “We want to ensure that big families can move into big homes and the way to do that is by providing this type of incentive so that downsizers as well don’t feel that financial strain, they can make this move that is good for them and good for the next generation of South Australians as well,” Ms Hurn said at a press conference after the launch. “We want South Australians at every stage of their lives to have the home that fits best for them.”
The concession comes on top of a previously announced Liberal promise to abolish stamp duty for all first-home buyers purchasing a new or established home under $1 million.
Mr Malinauskas’s comments came as the party unveiled its election plan to create 1,300 new aged care beds and ease hospital backlog. The centrepiece would be the transformation of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in North Adelaide, in partnership with the private sector, into an aged care precinct with more than 600 beds. He said a Labor government would ensure the North Adelaide site is not sold off for high-rise luxury apartments and would instead remain for public use after the hospital moves to its new location in the city’s west end in 2031.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/sa-liberal-party-stamp-duty-election-promise/106318938