Speirs today ended weeks of speculation about his intentions by confirming his candidacy in a Liberal leadership ballot to replace outgoing Steven Marshall, at a party-room meeting next Tuesday.
He said he wouldn’t rule out a frontbench role for Chapman if he wins the leadership – while unequivocally asserting there would be a shadow ministry for Marshall’s former press secretary Ashton Hurn, who was elected to parliament in the seat of Schubert last month.
Speirs will face off against former Speaker and (briefly) Local Government and Planning Minister Josh Teague, and maverick backbencher Nick McBride – both of whom entered parliament at the 2018 election.
Speirs, who was first elected four years earlier, was previously a Marion councillor and bureaucrat who worked in the Department of Premier and Cabinet under Mike Rann.
But he today pitched his leadership towards re-engagement with regional communities and small business, the party’s core constituency that he says “might have drifted a bit in recent years”.
Addressing the media at a beachside café in his southern seat of Black, Speirs said the fact he managed to avoid the double digit swings against the Government in the electorate that cost neighbouring seats such as Gibson and Davenport showed “I can connect with ordinary South Australians” – a task he wants to broaden across the state.
While declining to name Chapman or his opponent Teague – whose father Baden was a longtime Liberal senator – Speirs said “I think the party has a number of dynasties which have been involved for a long period of time”.
He said they reflected “Old Adelaide and Old SA organisations and businesses, and while those people ought to be respected for the contribution they’ve made to the state, there’s a new economy, a fresh economy, and many hundreds of thousands of people not associated with that old way of doing things”.
“I want to look to the future and refresh the way the party does things,” he said.
He said Liberals had run a “lousy campaign” – citing a poor reception for both the city arena and the scrapping of the Adelaide 500 – suggesting he raised concerns with the party leadership before the election.
“There was plenty of discussions internally about the way the campaign was going… myself and many colleagues made statements and raised suggestions about how we could do things better,” he xjmtzywsaid.
“There’s an opportunity for the party to step back and look at these matters very carefully.”
He said the party should apologise to Liberal voters who wanted a Liberal Government elected, but conceded many of those would not have felt like they had a truly Liberal Government for the past four years.
