00:01Well let's get some more on this election result.
00:05We're joined now from Adelaide by strategist and former Labor advisor Ryan Liddell.
00:10Hi there Ryan, thank you so much for your time today.
00:14I want to start with Labor's result here, a pretty resounding win which I suppose was
00:19what everyone expected.
00:22How has Premier Peter Malinowskis increased his majority?
00:27Well it is a good day to be a Labor Party member in South Australia today Mel, you're
00:32right.
00:33The previous record for Labor Party in South Australia was at a general election was 28
00:38seats, winning 28 seats and that was Mike Rann in 2006 in the famous RAND slide.
00:45So what Peter Malinowskis needed to do last night was to win 29 seats which is how many
00:50seats he held out of 47 already and that would have been the most number of seats won and
00:56a general election by the Labor Party in South Australia's history.
00:59Now he's obviously eclipsed that, we're looking at 34, 35 possibly 36 seats for the Labor Party.
01:04So after four years in government, he's extremely popular as a Premier down here, he's got a
01:11national presence as well but the Labor Party has had a pretty strong record in government
01:14to campaign on and we saw the results of that last night.
01:17He certainly doesn't seem to be sort of taking it for granted though.
01:21The Premier said on Insiders this morning that there's no longer such thing as a safe seat.
01:27What do you make of that comment and his comments that we just heard a little earlier about voters
01:34moving away from the Labor Party in some areas?
01:38There's one characteristic of the Premier and the government down here which is really interesting,
01:42Mel, is that they're incredibly hungry and ambitious and I think if you see some of the
01:47things that the Premier does in so far as for example a few weeks ago you're pinching the
01:51MotoGP off Victoria, he certainly doesn't die wondering so he's very ambitious for the state.
01:56There's a real feeling of optimism around certainly Adelaide, metropolitan Adelaide and the
02:00widest sort of part of South Australia over the past sort of four years, certainly since you know the
02:04last election in 2022. But there are a couple of other things which I think were interesting
02:08worth talking about that happened last night as well. Obviously there was a big surge in support
02:13now to suburban Adelaide for One Nation and regional South Australia as well which is
02:18what people will be focusing on. But interestingly the Liberal Party primary vote tanked to 18 percent.
02:25The last lowest record for the lowest record for the primary vote for Liberal Party in South
02:29Australia was 31.5 percent in the 1970s and they polled 18 percent last night so this is an utter
02:35catastrophe for the Liberal Party across the state. They have been wiped out in metropolitan Adelaide
02:41except for that one seat of Bragg in the eastern suburbs and it doesn't just mean that you know
02:46they're in a terrible place for the next sort of four years, it means that they don't have the
02:49infrastructure to rebuild to take the fight to the to the Labor Party at the next election in four
02:55years time so it really is dark days for the Liberal Party down here in South Australia. And there has
03:00of course been a lot of talk about One Nation in the lead-up to this election and today as
03:06these
03:06results are coming through. The party hasn't yet secured a seat. On last check they look like they're ahead
03:13in two at the moment. But what do these numbers say do you think about the conservative side of
03:21politics and where people who might have traditionally voted Liberal are at with the
03:27party as a whole and and where they're sort of leaning into the future? Well one of the things that
03:32was very interesting about this election Mel was there were more candidates running in this election
03:36than ever before about 50 percent more than the previous election so I think it was about 400 as
03:42opposed to 250 or something like that. And that was perpetuated by a significant increase in candidates
03:49from the right from the far right. There's clearly a strong sense of grievance politics across regional
03:55South Australia as well as out of suburban areas in south of Adelaide. I know there were some quite
04:01nervous people at ALPHQ earlier in the night last night particularly around seats like Mawson in the
04:07southern part of Adelaide, the Fleurieu Peninsula, Aldinga etc. And in the north as well up around Elizabeth,
04:15Salisbury etc. But I mean if you look at some of the results that came through Adelaide
04:19some of the swings towards the ALP in metropolitan Adelaide are extraordinary. Nadia Clancy in the seat of
04:25Ella for example, she's now at 75-25 on a 2pp basis, won her seat on primaries. That's a 16
04:32to 17 percent swing towards her. The seat of Unley where I live hasn't been held by the Labor Party
04:39in
04:39nearly 30 years. Alice Rolls, the candidate down there, had a swing to her of 13-14 percent. So it
04:46really
04:46does make it very hard for the Liberal Party to come back from that. And then at the same time,
04:50as you say, the possibility of One Nation having a couple of seats in the lower house,
04:55picking up a couple of seats in the Legislative Council as well, puts the Liberal Party in a very
05:01difficult position of do they talk to the One Nation on the right or do they talk to the Labor
05:05Party on the left. So the government here has done a very good job of governing from the centre which
05:10has wedged the Liberal Party as we saw last night. All right, Ryan Liddell, thank you so much for your
05:16insights and analysis today. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Will. Cheers.
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