National eyes on election where there is a second prize
Abe Maddison |
Three political leaders have taken aim at their opponents’ shortcomings ahead of a state election in which national interest is focused solely on who finishes second.
After a four-week campaign, South Australians will head to the polls on Saturday with the incumbent Labor government a clear favourite in opinion polls as One Nation looks to overtake the Liberals.
If opinion polls were accurate, One Nation would push the Liberals into third place on primary votes, Adelaide University emeritus professor of politics Clem Macintyre told AAP.
“And that would be a remarkable occurrence,” he said.
“If One Nation do very well, maybe not in winning seats but in votes, it will be tempting to start talking about the end of two-party politics at the federal level.”
Premier Peter Malinauskas on Friday said voters had a choice between the politics of discord and disunity, or his pro-business, centrist Labor government.
“There is an opportunity here … to maintain the momentum of South Australia and its people, not vote for chaos, not vote for division, because that’s what’s on offer from the Liberals and One Nation,” he said.
The Liberals were a divided rabble and One Nation was a Queensland party with zero plans for South Australia, he said.
Asked if he would be leading Labor in four years, Mr Malinauskas said he did not want to do anything else and was committed to being premier for as long as he had the opportunity to do so.
Liberal leader Ashton Hurn, a first-term MP who ascended to the role only 103 days before the election, said her final promise was to deliver what she said she was going to deliver.
“People should look to the premier’s track record of delivery … this is about integrity in politics,” Ms Hurn said.
“He’s failed to deliver his two number one election promises in terms of fixing (ambulance) ramping and delivering the hydrogen power plant, and his PR prowess does paper over a litany of failures that this government has presided over.
“We’ve got a really clear vision for the people of South Australia … it’s the bread and butter issues that people are stopping me in the street to talk about.”
Mrs Hurn said One Nation did not have a positive policy.
“I don’t even know that they’re running to form government because they don’t have a leader in the lower house,” she said.
One Nation state leader Cory Bernardi said the party had given people hope and would be the strongest voice for all South Australians.
“People have had enough of being ignored by the Labor and Liberal uniparty … and had enough of their desperate attacks on One Nation,” he said.
“They know we’re listening to them about the cost of living, about mass immigration and the housing crisis, about net zero and the cost of electricity, about fuel shortages hurting our farmers and regional communities.”
Almost 30 per cent of the state’s 1.3 million enrolled voters cast their ballot in the first five days of early voting, while another 174,000 (13.2 per cent) had requested postal voting, the SA Electoral Commission said.
The record early turnout showed the electorate was increasingly seeking convenience, Flinders University public policy associate lecturer Josh Sunman told AAP.
“It does mean that political campaigns don’t matter that much in the final week, and that means the campaign effectively ended last week,” he said.
AAP