Candidates have been declared for the South Australian election, and are featured in ballot paper order on the seat pages of the Poll Bludger election guide, at least for the lower house. There are a great many of them: 388 for the lower house, an average over eight per seat. Given there are fewer than 30,000 enrolled voters per seat, it would not surprise me if this were an Australian record in per capita terms. Not only Labor, Liberal, One Nation and the Greens but also the Australian Family Party (associated with former Senator Bob Day, who leads its upper house ticket, and not to be confused with Family First, which separately has 35 candidates) are running in all 47 seats, and six further parties have a substantial presence. The table below compares the number of candidates by party at this election compared with 2022.
| 2026 | 2022 | |
| Labor | 47 | 47 |
| Liberal | 47 | 47 |
| Greens | 47 | 43 |
| One Nation | 47 | 19 |
| Australian Family | 47 | 6 |
| Family First | 35 | 34 |
| Independent | 33 | 20 |
| Sarah Game Fair Go | 22 | |
| Legalise Cannabis | 17 | |
| Animal Justice | 16 | 10 |
| United Voice | 14 | |
| Real Change | 12 | 4 |
| Nationals | 3 | 8 |
| SA Best | 1 | 1 |
| Liberal Democrats | 1 | |
| TOTAL | 388 | 240 |
The proliferation of candidates does not extend to the Legislative Council, which has about the same number of groups and candidates as in 2022. Rather remarkably, the ballot paper draw has placed every major or large minor party on the right of the ballot paper, if the Nationals might be thought to count in the South Australian context.
Other news:
• David Penberthy in The Australian reports that a conspicuous meeting at a city hotel between One Nation lead candidate Cory Bernardi and arch-conservative Liberal Senator Alex Antic has been “seen as a broader signal that Liberal conservatives in SA are death-riding the moderate-dominated parliamentary party, willing it to lose and lose badly, as final punishment for taking the party to the left”. One unidentified state Liberal MP is tipped to defect to One Nation “in the event the SA Liberals implode”.
• Former Liberal leader David Speirs is running as an independent in his old seat of Black. This would seem optimistic both politically, given his conviction his 2025 conviction for supplying drugs, and legally, given the state’s Constitution Act prohibits those convicted of indictable offences from serving in parliament.
• Roy Morgan had an SMS poll last week putting Labor at 35%, One Nation at 28%, the Liberals and Nationals at 16.5% and the Greens at 11% – well at the high end for One Nation out of recent state polling. Peter Malinauskas recorded 61% approval and 37% disapproval, compared with 52% and 42% for Ashton Hurn, with Malinauskas leading 60% to 30.5% on preferred premier. The poll was conducted February 19 to 23 from a sample of 2172.
Eston
Completely agree.
“He is spectacularly effective in speaking without notes and drawing energy from the crowd, but it leaves a vacuum behind him.”
You will have noticed the senior ministers who left. Only the die-hards and try-hards are left. He takes all the credit when there is a positive announcement, often on the back of other Minister’s work, but when it goes to shit which it has done plenty of times (ramping, hydrogen fantasy camp, algal bloom, Proton Beam non-Centre etc) its Picton, Turbo etc who have to front up.
Spiers should have kept out of it. The lied repeatedly in addition to the cocaine charges and when he popped up, I think it fair for the Tiser to go after him.
We really could do without Cory and a Joanna Howe-rep in the upper house. But I think we’re stuck with them.
Diogenes, we welcome your vote for the shambles of Conservatism one-nation ism. But as Keating said, “good on you son, good on you” Not sure if you have curley hair….
Pretty much bald. I usually vote Labor but their arrogance at state level is a turn off.
It’s easy to look good without opposition
Just watched that report on ABC News about this almighty fuckup from somebody in the SA health ministry:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-08/sa-premier-concedes-unacceptable-error-in-email-release-blunder/106429604
I’m genuinely baffled as to what whoever was responsible for this thought it would achieve. Even if it was the right guy, I can’t see any circumstance where releasing that letter would not have been awful optics.
Asha
I was asked about it. Picton has breached the Privacy Act (Fed) and the Privacy Principles of the public service and the Health Act (state).
Even if he got the right person he had still breached them all as he didn’t get consent (the guy was dead) but he actually got the wrong patient.
As you say, even so would you attack a recent widow whose husband had a terrible experience while they died ramped?
He has to be sacked. Malis problem is they were going to move him into AG (he has a law degree) but you can’t break all those laws and become AG.
The Sloan Zone on the Liberals’ decision to preference One Nation. His verdict: “the Dumbest Preference Deal Imaginable”. It’s not even a deal, with One Nation not directing preferences.
https://youtu.be/KKhnEbi2TRM?si=N5KfOjoME7x0DlUI
Yeah. The Liberals just arranged for their own funeral right then and there.
I’m a left-leaning voter who’s about to jump ship and preference the Libs over Labor, not without some misgivings. I’m worried that without an effective opposition, Malinauskas will steamroller over everyone’s rights. Look at the way he’s behaved whenever he wants something (uni merger, LIV golf, MotoGp, SA museum, Writer’s Week, skyscraper on Festival Plaza). The way he cut out the Adelaide City Council over LIV golf was just appalling.
Regarding the stuff-up of the man who died from cancer and mixing up an email from a person with the same name, the ABC article says the email was sent to the Premier’s email address, NOT the health minister. How did the health minister know it existed? Something smells bad here, is Chris Picton being thrown under a bus?
JS
No. It would just have been forwarded to Picton. I don’t think Mali was at fault.
Personally I’m not even sure the email was genuine. It was probably a fake email from either SA Health or CALHN to the premier to make him think they were doing a good job. Let’s see if it’s even real.
Picton is Gonski as Health minister and he’s taking his CE with him. Good riddance to both. I hope we don’t get Boyar who is another amoral political animal. Emily Burke has been mentioned and she’d be vastly better.
JS
Mail is a narcissist. If it’s good for him, it’s good for the state. Mike Rann was the same.
SA Health or CALHN would send a fake email to the Premier???!! Geez has it got to that stage, a Potemkin health service.
Mali is definitely a narcissist, ironically he was the one to tap Rann on the shoulder
JS
“Mali is definitely a narcissist, ironically he was the one to tap Rann on the shoulder”
That has been mentioned a few times.
I just hope there is some opposition left. It might not be the Libs.
The Tiser fawns over him, esp Starick.
I’m pretty sure Pembo has offered to leave his wife for him. And he’s married to Kate Ellis!!
“SA Health or CALHN would send a fake email to the Premier???!! Geez has it got to that stage, a Potemkin health service.”
They fake their ramping numbers so an email is child’s play.
If they fake their ramping numbers why don’t they make them go down to please the King?
One Nation won’t be much of an opposition, any who get elected will be in it for themselves and would easily be manipulated by Malinauskas the Master Machiavellian
JS
There is only so much they can fudge the ramping figures. The ambos know how bad it is.
Pages 2 & 3 of today’s Advertiser are one big yellow ad for United Australia, who aren’t even standing in this election! Has anything like this happened before?
It looks like Labor is pretty much settling on around 34-37 seats with the Liberals settling on around 2-4 seats, and One Nation settling on around 1-3 seats with the Greens hovering around 0-1 seats with the only seat that’s competitive for them being Heysen.
My central prediction for now is ALP: 35 seats, LIB: 4 seats, PHON: 2 seats, GRN: 0 seats, IND: 6 seats, and OTH: 0 seats.
What two seats for ON?
It’s almost impossible to read the non metro seats with four way contests. Labor will win all the metro seats.
Hammond and MacKillop provided Nick McBride takes around 10-15% of the vote off of the Liberals.
And also, Labor winning all of the metropolitan seats is only an outside possibility anyways since the swing to Labor in Metropolitan Adelaide would be around 5%.
TBM
How someone on home detention can run is beyond me. How would he turn up to vote?
There might be a small personal vote. There always is regardless of how corrupt, and or evil a politician is.
I have no idea how he would show up to the polling booth.
Thomas:
With the last poll having been released several weeks ago, I’m not sure anyone can really be making seat predictions at the moment. We have no way of knowing how or if the vote has shifted since then.
Looks like both Labor and Liberal have former Director of Public Prosecutions Steven Pallaris KC as their 4th preference on their LC how to vote cards.
Doesn’t this dramatically increase the chance that he will win a seat in the LC possibly at the expense of One Nation?
He is the same guy that Martin Hamilton-Smith wanted as his Attorney General if he won the 2014 election
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/sa-liberals-planned-to-install-former-dpp-stephen-pallaras-as-attorneygeneral/news-story/4b12bccd821b3baabf969e5728d9337f
“FORMER Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras was to be installed as Attorney-General if the Liberals had won the 2014 election, under a secret plan engineered by one of its most senior MPs.
The Advertiser can reveal that Martin Hamilton-Smith — now an independent in the Weatherill Cabinet — approached Mr Pallaras in mid-2012 and offered him the position as his term as DPP was expiring, in an effort to bring “new blood’’ into the party.
However, when Mr Hamilton-Smith lost the leadership ballot against Isobel Redmond in August, 2012, the plan faltered and was subsequently abandoned when Steven Marshall was elected leader six months later, after Ms Redmond resigned.
The failed plan, which would have handed Mr Pallaras a safe spot on the Upper House ticket at the 2014 election if it had proceeded, has been confirmed by both Mr Hamilton-Smith and Mr Pallaras.”
SO
There are a lot of unresolved questions about Pallaras’ recent medical problems.
ShowsOn, I also note Pallaras is not too badly ranked on the Greens’ HTV as well. It’s possible he could be a preference magnet. All depends on 1) how loyal voters will be to HTV recommendations and 2) What Pallaras’s primary vote is (if he gets half a percent or whatever, it won’t matter how strong his preference flow is.)
Picton doing his level best to gift a few seats to the Libs.
One Nation not really providing an opposition. They just repeat their anti-immigrant crap.
Some of his ideas are rather wacky, like ending parole.
https://stephenpallaras.com/parole/
How many prisons would we need to build if that policy became law?
And SA has some of the most absurd parole conditions in the country, such as someone on parole can not even attend a licensed venue or drink alcohol anywhere other than at home.
He wants to make it that people on parole can’t even drink alcohol at home!