The Labor Government of South Australian Premier Mike Rann was this weekend kicked in the sensitive parts, not stabbed fatally in the heart. Forensic investigators will find the Liberals won 51% two-party preferred to Labor’s 49% in a massive 7.4% state-wide swing against Rann.
The Liberals won the majority of the vote but not the majority of the seats. Labor will govern in its own right with a minimum 24 of the 47 seats — a majority of at least one, and one’s all one needs to be one’s government.
As Crikey accurately predicted, the largest swings against the ALP were in Labor’s safest seats, including Rann’s own of Ramsay. In the seat of Adelaide, Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith was dumped by a 15% vote against her. In Croydon, the eccentric and erratic Attorney-General Michael Atkinson weathered a 12.5% willy-willy. In Elder, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Pat Conlon is lucky to hold onto the seat in the face of a similar anti-Labor cyclone. Treasurer and Deputy Premier Kevin Foley faced a Force-13.5 storm in his seat of Port Adelaide.
SA voted most strongly against the generals, not the centurions, among Rann’s legionnaires. Labor backbenchers were treated much more kindly than the highest-profile ministers. There was even an increased Labor vote in the seat of Light, where backbencher Tony Piccolo bucked the state-wide swing.
So Rann will stay on as Premier but the new war is among his own troops. Environment Minister Jay Weatherill, firmly in the Left faction, has declared a challenge to Foley, who’s glued hard on the Right.
Rann now says he will listen more to the people. Pat Conlon’s reaction was to say Labor obviously had to learn how better to sell its message, dismissing the possibility that people had heard and understood the message well enough, but they didn’t like it.
Now Rann says he will re-earn the trust of South Australians, yet from its foundations the Labor Government was built on a lie. This election was close, but in 2002 the result was an absolute cliff-hanger. Eight years ago today, Labor was a dead heat with the Liberal Party. That gave independent Peter Lewis the choice. He could side with Labor or the Libs — make either one government.
He’d promised his electors of Hammond he would never side with Labor, but then Labor worked him over. A Labor emissary went to Lewis and made a closed-door deal with him. Lewis was lied to. He was told Labor could still win one more seat where, he was told, the result was in doubt.
In truth the seat wasn’t in doubt; it was a Liberal win.
Here’s the deal Lewis was offered: throw in your lot with us now, Labor said, and we’ll make you speaker, the most prestigious job in parliament. But it’s now or never. When we win the other seat and won’t need you, the deal’s off. So Lewis became speaker, and Labor got Government.
On Saturday Labor repeated history. This morning the Liberal Party announced it is seeking legal advice about a how-to-vote card authorised by Labor but which didn’t mention the ALP.
In key marginals which unlock elections — where preferences from the Family First party would be critical — people rolled up to the voting booth to have their democratic, once-in-four-year say. Milling around the booths were folk in blue t-shirts and the slogan ‘vote for your family, put your Family First’, and they gave away how-to-vote cards. Friendly folk, they looked to be. Sinister they were. The cards put Family First one, but then Labor second ahead of the Libs.
Family First’s official position, however — its official card — puts it the other way around: the Libs ahead of Labor for second preference. Thousands of people, tricked into voting the wrong way.
The phoney ones were authorised ‘M Brown, 141 Gilles Street, Adelaide’. Who would have thought that 141 Gilles Street is the address of the headquarters of the Australian Labor Party’s South Australian branch? There’s no mention of the Labor Party in the forgery. It did exactly what its designers wanted it to — make people think it was from Family First, and steal those second preferences.
They have been deceived by a political party that apparently has no moral qualms about duping its way into government.
This election was about trust. Rann himself spoke the word. Yes, it was about trust alright.
Not that I support these Labor shenanigans with Family First preferences, but I’m old enough to remember that Labor’s learned this trick from the Liberals and the now defunct DLP. How many times were intending Labor voters fooled into voting for the DLP with their identical to Labor’s ‘how to vote’ cards, the preferences of which helped keep the Liberals in office? I clearly remember this skulduggery and the fact that there was nary a peep from the press.
It’s good to see such indignation and righteousness even if it’s a tad too late. I’m not particularly pro Labor but it’s true that a misdemeanour by the anti-Labor forces miraculously becomes original sin when Labor copies it.
What’s ‘Independant’ about you, Mr Gout? You sound just like a Liberal shill to me, and have done all through the SA election campaign. Not one word from you, in any of your ‘reports’ about Isobel Redmond’s dodgy Bowling Club deals, or the Liberals shonkily-costed ‘promises’ re the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and others.
I bet you had indigestion all day Sunday when you realised all your hard work to unseat the Labor government had come to nought.
A developer gets a nice public park in exchange for a toxic waste dump. Privatising the profits and socialising the loss. Just the stuff of Labo(u)r governments.
How to vote cards being handed out at election locations should be banned fullstop.
The ALP-authorised Family First how-to-votes in Mawson were clearly marked ‘Authorised by Michael Brown 141 Gilles St Adelaide for the Australian Labor Party’. Not sure about other seats.