Notwithstanding a headline in today’s Advertiser reading “candidate runs food truck without council approvals”, the biggest development of the South Australian campaign has probably been a scandal surrounding Health Minister Chris Picton (brother of Tim Picton, the former Labor WA state secretary who died in January after an assault outside a Perth nightclub), whose staff botched a bad job in seeking to discredit patients and their relatives who have complained about ambulance ramping. Yesterday brought the news that former AFL player Chris McDermott, star candidate and upper house ticket leader for the Sarah Game Fair Go for Australians party, had quit the party due to “irreconcilable differences” with Game, but the party’s prospects were likely remote in any case.
The remainder of this post will focus on how-to-vote cards, which can be found neatly displayed on the Electoral Commission website. These are of greater account than in other contexts due to the state’s distinctive practice of displaying them in polling booths, giving those of smaller parties a coverage they normally lack in the absence of the large volunteer base needed to disseminate them.
In considering the preferences of major parties, it is important to remember that their preferences are only distributed where they fail to run first or second, which is applying to an ever-increasing number of seats. However, in the case of Labor at the current election, it’s likely to happen only in country seats and perhaps a few places on the urban periphery where the final count could come down to Liberal and an independent. Labor’s cards notably have the Liberals ahead of a number of competitive or incumbent independents: Nick McBride and Fraser Ellis are last in MacKillop and Narungga, and Airlie Keen is behind the Liberal (though not One Nation) in Hammond. The point is almost certainly academic in Florey, but it’s nonetheless interesting to note that the Liberal candidate has been put ahead of one-time Labor MP Frances Bedford.
The Liberals have in all cases put One Nation ahead of Labor without the requirement of a “deal”, since One Nation is not directing preferences in any lower house seat, and in the upper house recommends preferences only to the two “family” parties. One Nation have also been placed ahead of competitive independents in Finniss (Lou Nicholson), Flinders (Meghan Petherick) and MacKillop (Nick McBride, who has been put last), though not Narungga (Fraser Ellis), Kavel (Matt Schultz), Mount Gambier (Travis Fatchen) and Port Adelaide (Claire Boan). As is usual for the Liberals these days, the Greens have mostly been put last and Labor second last.
The Greens have Labor ahead of Frances Bedford in Florey, despite what seems to me to be her progressive record as a former MP, along with the other independents previously noted in Narungga, MacKillop, Kavel and Hammond. However, the independents have been placed higher in Finniss, where Labor could conceivably make the final count, and Flinders, where it seems unlikely. The party has for some reason opted not to offer a recommendation in the seat of Adelaide.
Family First, the Australian Family Party and Fair Go for Australians all have conventionally right-wing tickets, with the first favouring One Nation over Liberal and the others largely vice-versa. The latter has been consistently favourable to independents, the others variable. The Nationals, who are running in three seats, have Meghan Petherick in Flinders ahead of both the Liberals and One Nation, and Liberal only fifth on an upper house order that favours small conservative parties. United Voice Australia has a consistently right-wing ordering of One Nation, Liberal, Labor, Greens, but has favoured independents over all of the above in all relevant cases, namely Florey, Port Adelaide and Narungga.
Animal Justice consistently has a conventionally left-wing ordering of Greens, Labor, Liberal, One Nation, but has favoured independents over all of them in relevant cases where the party is running, namely Finniss, Kavel and Stuart. Legalise Cannabis and Stephen Pallaras Real Change are all over the shop: the former seems to favour right-wing preference ordering in country seats and left-wing in the city, and has Labor ahead of the Greens in the upper house; the latter is consistent only in having One Nation last.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion of the South Australian election. The open thread for general discussion is here.
I finally figured out what is the core cause of the ‘Ramping’ problem. ‘Bed Block’. Beds being taken up by Aged Care and Disability Care patients who haven’t got anywhere to go because they can’t go home.
So, what’s the solution to that? I don’t think the State government or the federal government can afford to build enough accommodation for them. In the space of one term at least. Nor get private companies to do the same.
It’d be interesting to hear from locals on how different the campaign looks this time around given the changes to political donation laws. Are you getting as many ads as usual?
You see libs this is how you cut through….
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=AAWEB_MRE170_a&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.adelaidenow.com.au%2Fnews%2Fsouth-australia%2Fstate-election%2Fcommissioner-dale-agius-blasts-one-nation-leader-cory-bernardi-over-videos-mangling-kaurna-language%2Fnews-story%2F201744b77ddc313e50c2a7e78228321d&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=ULTRALOW-Segment-2-SCORE
Sadly SA libs are disinterested and have no idea on campaign,should be all over cost of living in media etc as just before this election a interest rate rise is coming.
One nation thanks you in advance !
Q: I finally figured out what is the core cause of the ‘Ramping’ problem. ‘Bed Block’. Beds being taken up by Aged Care and Disability Care patients who haven’t got anywhere to go because they can’t go home.
BINGO!
The Government is addressing this – the old Womens and Chlidrens is being turned into step down Aged Care, and the Old Repat too…but it takes time.
c@t:
This is part of the problem, but my understanding it’s a bit more complicated than that. First of all, ramping usually occurs due to Emergency Department beds all being full. This can sometimes be because they are full of people waiting to go into longer-term hospital beds, and this can be a function of the whole hospital being full, particularly in winter when a lot of old people are there with respiratory illnesses. However, ramping can also be simply due to the ED being overwhelmed by something like several major car accidents at once. EDs will always be bottlenecks and IMO any politician who claims to have found the answer to the problem of ramping shouldn’t be wasting their genius on that issue but should be in the Middle East sorting out the problems there.
As for getting the old people out of the hospitals: it’s not always clear that putting them somewhere else would be more appropriate or less expensive. People with serious cases of pneumonia or COVID or whatever probably should be in hospital. Many others are so demented and have multiple co-morbidies to the extent that ordinary age care facilities can’t deal with them any longer. Specialist facilities can do the job, but these probably cost about the same or more per bed than hospitals.
You will often hear state governments and state hospital officials going on and on about “bed blockers” and the need for something to be done about them. It’s always a good excuse for them, and of course they are in favour of the Feds doing more to address it, because nursing home beds are funded Federally funded on a per capita basis, while the Federal funding for hospital beds is more fixed.
I think the answer in the long-term is to provide integrated funding for the provision of care to the very old and frail, so that they can always be cared for in the place that’s best suited to their needs, and never become caught up in a duck-shoving exercise between Federal and state officials.
Anyway, that’s my view FWIW.
PS. This bloke sounds nice. Even Pauline might find some of his views to be a little too extreme for her taste.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-11/sa-liberal-candidate-carston-woodhouse-islam-transgender-issues/106440958
How long is the Liberal candidate in Wright going to survive with his claims that “Islam is poisonous and wrong”, “feminism is demonic” and “demonic realms may be opened if you accept homosexuality”? Or will it be the claim he has seen witches melt (Wizard of Oz notwithstanding) that get him in the end?
What happened to the good old days where the Liberals would actually go around vetting their candidates statements?
Between this guy and the Libs preferencing One Nation, Jack Batty’s task of holding Bragg and the Libs holding seats like Unley and Morialta just keeps getting harder.
Can’t wait for election night. It’ll be another Kirkup!
B Mann
Here’s what Ashton Hurn said in response:
Apart from the question of why voters would ever elect a Premier who would adopt such a laissez faire approach to leading a government, this statement might be interpreted as meaning that Hurn is too scared to take on the far right people who currently seem to run the SA Liberal Party.
There is absolutely no question that the candidate should be disendorsed immediately. Labor has done this in the past when candidates have expressed extreme anti-Israel positions or the like. SA Labor would be justified in making a huge thing about the Libs’ refusal to disendorse this creep, but what’s the point when the SA Libs are about to get crushed anyway?
I caution Labor supporters on here against premature gloating about the result. While, don’t get me wrong here, Labor will win this thing and it will likely be a big win, some are already doing victory laps over the Liberals being completely wiped off the map or the non-Labor members of the HoA not even being enough to fill a basketball team.
Problem is if the Liberals do a smidge better than that expectation and manage to save a bit of the furniture, it is going to give them a moral victory and make you look a tad hubristic.
I mean do what you want, just be careful you’re not setting the bar way too high.
Wat Tyler @9.06am
Well, I’m not particularly a Labor supporter (although I usually vote for them), and I think they and PHON are going to wipe the floor with the Libs in SA.
The Liberal Party has reached a very dark place in a very short period of time, and it won’t be easy for them to find their way back. (Although I fully expect them, or some successor party, to do so sooner or later.)
Meyer baba makes two very interesting points.
The libs have hit rock bottom because they have suffered a hostile takeover from within. The angry old men and the “christian” right have coalesced and driven anybody respectable out. The libs were always horrible if you dig below the surface, but now they have no cover. We can see who and what they really are.
A new force will emerge, but we are yet to see who their new Menzies is.
Mabwm, given South Australia was the home of the Australian Democrats, I’m surprised a more centrist grouping has not sprung up. SA Best could have filled that void but relied far too heavily on Xenphon, without putting any structures in to survive his departure.
Maybe if we see independents win in Flinders, Finniss, Kavel or more outside chances in Hammond and Mount Gambier, a more centrist group could rise.
Ashton Hurn’s positive plan that includes a man who think women are demonic and that gay sex opens a portal to the demon realm?
Ashton, the “freeze peach” excuse doesn’t wash when you’re endorsing and standing alongside the man. You aren’t “letting him have an opinion”, you’re saying that you and the party agree with his views.
C@t
Aged care beds are definitely part of it. Mali and Picton have been throwing Albo under that bus for ages. They are building beds in the distant future.
As you say, those beds are expensive to build and staff. We just couldn’t staff them at the moment if they existed.
The ageing population problem is only going to get worse.
And Picton hasn’t escaped his problems yet. He will be lucky to get to the election.
SA Labor’s campaign has not been flawless. Or rather its recent governing hasn’t been. Both the writer’s week media storm and the (illegal?) leaking of incorrect patient’s details were regrettable. When Labor is reelected the Health minister probably should be reshuffled. Apart from that, the Labor campaign itself has been good.
Nevertheless, the SA Liberals and One Nation remain a policy-less, extremist joke. I’m still hoping Bragg flips on the night.
Dio
I agree. Picton’s position is untenable after the emails. As much as I hope Labor wins this election, Picton should be booted out of the Ministry after the election.
And with that the Liberals lose their first lower house candidate. Woodhouse is out in Wright.
Not a bad tally for the Libs:
– lose a candidate,
– make the leader look weak after she supported him yesterday, and
– make the campaign look disorganised after the campaign spokesman told the ABC he was still the candidate earlier only a short time ago.
Pretty meaningless as his name will still appear on the ballot paper as the Liberal candidate.
FFS.
Re above Media coverage of its terrible.
Great stuff here’s more lib stupidity today….
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=AAWEB_MRE170_a&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.adelaidenow.com.au%2Fnews%2Fsouth-australia%2Fstate-election%2Fliberal-candidate-amar-singh-operated-food-truck-without-council-permit-since-2022%2Fnews-story%2F41bda11438ff5c45f1526f1459406387&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=ULTRALOW-Segment-2-SCORE
While we can say it’s easy for the states to blame the feds, it is absolutely true that lack of nursing homes and other safe discharge locations is absolutely one of the biggest contributors to access block. ACEM (the college of Emergency Medicine) and the AMA and state affiliates have been making this point for years.
As an aside, as a healthcare worker, I can think of very few ways that Picton’s actions could have been more disgusting. As a profession, we get accused of gaslighting quite a bit, but I think leaking a letter like that, even had it been the right person, is gaslighting in the extreme.
Soc
Four Corners on Monday is about the toxic algal bloom. It’s going to be bad for Mali. It will show the messaging was all about politics esp Mali refusing to use the word “toxic”.
I’ve heard Picton has more problems coming his way. He’s meant to be going to AG. I can’t see that happening if all the legal stuff leaves him under a cloud.
Who uses a patients confidential medical information to attack them?
JM
We’d be sacked if we released patient info to the media to put us in a better light.
He told the media the elective surgery cancellation lady had multiple myeloma by mentioning the drug she was on. He hasn’t even apologised for that one.
@Diogenes, yep, it’d reasonably be grounds for an AHPRA referral. But standards for thee and not for me, I guess. Mali has been trying his best to defend him.
It turns out belatedly that you can’t say you have seen witches melt and still run for the Libs.
I think that’s a victory for witches.
JM
Someone said the Health Minister isn’t subject to the Health Care Act. Because he isn’t employed by the health department. And I think the same for his political advisors.
Labor is literally just stat padding at this point.
William:
I’m almost certain you want at least one of those “country”s to read “city”. Either that, or Legalise Cannabis have been indulging in rather more than their party name would suggest.
I get what people normally mean when it concerns caution with seat predictions when the polls are a month old, but in the case of South Australia that’s exactly when the polls are the most accurate, and it’s looking like it’s going to be the biggest government majority in South Australia since the 1993 election when the Liberals won over 30 seats in the House of Assembly.
Diogenes and a few others in here seem to have this hatred towards Malinauskas, to the point that those who I’d normally consider to be of the leftish persuasion are cheerleading for a narrow Labor win or a hung parliament.
Sure, the health minister made a major error and he’ll most likely be moved somewhere else after the election, and yes, ramping is a problem in every state in the country.
I guess Mali is just too slick and too electable for some in this thread.
If the SA Liberals weren’t so useless, one would assume this scandal might see a swing back to them. But they’ve got enough of their, um, own problems right now that I’m not sure they will actually benefit much from it at all.
Will be interesting to see whether or not there’s a further surge to One Nation or to other third parties / independents as a result of this cockup (and the potential it has to knock some gloss off of Malinauskus and put ramping in the forefront of peoples’ minds again.) I suspect not enough to put much of a dent in what is looking to be a sizeable victory, but I would caution that it has nearly a month since the last poll and the Picton stuff strikes me as exactly the sort of narrative shifting event that could possibly result in a late unexpected swing.
I’m not sure if the great unwashed is aware we have an election coming up, let alone having any interest in the arguments or intricacies of the campaign.
A fairly knowledgeable bloke with an engineering degree asked me today if voting is compulsory. He reckons Mali has been there long enough and has to go.
Long enough? He’s only had one term.
Thanks JK — it was the second one that was supposed to be “city”.
I guess you could say at least with Ashton Hurn, unlike Peter Dutton she will actually win her own seat at least.
I think there was a survey recently showing Picton was behind only Malinauskas in the popularity stakes, interesting when you look at the young talent coming along in the Labor Party. This misdemeanor will blow over in a few days, but the Libs will continue to implode right up to election day. Sorry Diogs. and the other worry warts. The polling has been hovering around 60/40 since about, let me think, the last election. The Government will be returned, most likely with an increased majority.
What % of voters had already voted before the Picton scandal broke?
And are those votes relatively evenly spread across the state?
Early voting doesn’t start till Sat 14 March. Only some postal votes and maybe some remote votes to date.
From the ABC:
Jesus tapdancing christ, this guy is pure evil. He doesn’t care if the whole party gets burnt to the ground, as long as his extremist fringe clique get their own way.
__________
Socrates (or anyone else): if Labor need an attorney-general and Rick Sarre wins Bragg, would he be a possibility? He’d be a brand new MP, but possibly the best qualified one in the house – “emeritus professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Australia” is hard to beat.
The Picton saga probably won’t move the dial much for a few reasons.
First, the Liberals simply cannot land a hit. Instead of tying it directly to the government’s weakest point, ramping, the whole thing drifted into a story about the release of information. The Liberal health spokesperson expressed the hope that it won’t happen again. Riveting.
Second, bread and circuses still works. Mali is very good at rolling out the next event, announcement or shiny building project. It creates momentum and people like it. The downside is that fewer people ask the obvious question about why ramping keeps getting worse despite the promise to end it.
Third, the Liberal candidate issues are unlikely to stop with one case. That is not because vetting failed. It is probably because the vetting has been very effective at selecting candidates aligned with the Antic and Pasin faction’s culture war agenda.
The result is likely to be a heavy Liberal defeat, which frankly they have earned. The real problem comes after that.
With a very weak opposition there is little scrutiny. Legislation will pass easily and the Labor backbench will not push back. Some of it will look appealing at first. The consequences of rushed laws and minimal questioning tend to appear later.
Thomas Brian Mutter says:
Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 7:13 pm
I guess you could say at least with Ashton Hurn, unlike Peter Dutton she will actually win her own seat at least.
Not too sure about that!! One Nation are a massive chance here if the polling is accurate.
Diogenes:
Fixed that for you. 😉
Someone got sacked for doing this last month, with former Vic premier Daniel Andrews (whose medical condition seems to be a favourite of conspiracy theorists). Anyone who works in a hospital / bank / etc who has access to confidential records gets the rules drummed into them. It’s literally written in big red capital letters “YOU WILL GET SACKED IF YOU DO THIS”. And that’s just viewing it, much less sending it to the media.
If the minister does something that would get an ordinary worker sacked and deregistered, surely there’d have to be some sort of consequences, even if he’s not answerable to AHPRA? Parliamentary censure? (Although that wouldn’t get far with a bloated Labor majority.)
It will be a heavy Lib defeat.
But Picton will be very lucky to even make it to the election. And Labor’s tactics of using confidential information to attack opponents will cost them heavily next term.
They will have another bad week coming up.
BoP
There is still ICAC who could investigate him.
Killer fact: the Liberal first preference total from the 2022 election (389,218) is an anagram (or whatever) of their total from 2018 (398,182).
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/chris-pictons-cancer-widow-blunder-blows-cyclone-pauline-off-the-radar-david-penberthy/news-story/27d56279c2a62fd5c1282b68aae34291
And Penbo has a serious bromance with Mali.
This is how Mali governs. Picton isn’t the problem. It his leader who has no integrity. Not that that would matter to Labor inamorati for whom winning is the only thing that matters. Mali is their perfect leader. A moral vacuum.
I’m not from SA – I don’t like Mali, but I still don’t think Picton’s error is a blight on SA Labor as a whole (particularly when compared to their opponens), but I cannot state enough what an affront it is. The idea that Picton or his staffers thought it was a good idea is disgusting – if a doctor did the same thing, they would (rightfully) be hauled in front of AHPRA and disciplined if not de-registered. Picton obviously is not accountable to AHPRA but still needs to be held accountable – he’s gotta go. The longer Mali tries to defend him, the more disappointing it will be.
If Malinauskas had any decency, he would sack Picton.
I’m happy to bet my reputation against the Labor sociopaths here (there aren’t many) that this isn’t over.
I’ll even stop posting if I’m wrong. Let’s see who takes me up.
The Greens ads are so rubbish in what they’re trying to do. They’re literally preaching to the converted. Everyone knows Labor ain’t getting no majority in the Legislative Council. I’m not sure what they’re trying to achieve from their campaign other that the old tired “keep the majors honest” line that literally every minor party since the Democrats are running.