Scott Morrison and senior government MPs have sought to downplay the federal implications of Labor’s decisive victory at the South Australian state election, saying there’s a “big difference” between the premiers and Anthony Albanese.
Liberal Party Premier Steven Marshall conceded defeat on Saturday night, with big swings towards Labor making Peter Malinauskas the first leader to defeat an incumbent government since the pandemic began.
The ABC’s is projecting Labor will win 26 seats and the Liberals 15, with five independents.
Labor enjoyed swings of more than 5 per cent on a two-party preferred basis across South Australia, posing questions for the Morrison government ahead of the imminent federal election.
The Prime Minister on Sunday insisted the South Australian election was fought on “state issues” and said the federal election would be different.
Mr Morrison appeared to be well aware that he will have to get voters to re-elect him as the nation’s Liberal leader in an environment where Labor premiers have proved incredibly popular in their states.
“What I know is that Anthony Albanese is not Peter Malinauskas, he is not any of the other premiers, he is not Annastacia Palaszczuk. He is none of these other premiers,” Mr Morrison said, taking a dig at the Opposition Leader.
“One thing they have noticed is there is a big difference between Anthony Albanese as the federal Labor leader and what we see in the performance of some of his state colleagues.
“Mark McGowan is a good example of that. Anthony Albanese is no Mark McGowan. That is for sure.”
Mr Morrison and Mr McGowan last week appeared side-by-side at a joint press conference in Western Australia, where the Liberal Party was almost completely wiped out at the most recent state election.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham on Sunday tried to minimise any ramifications from the South Australian Liberals’ stunning loss.
The most senior South Australian politician in the Morrison government claimed some South Australian voters were “potentially tricked” by Labor’s state election campaign after the party secured a decisive victory.
Appearing on ABC’s Insiders, Senator Birmingham appeared reluctant to concede there were any lessons to be learned at a federal level.
He said he would work as closely as he could with Mr Malinauskas, but claimed Labor had run a singularly focused “scare campaign” on hospitals and ambulance ramping.
“I do think that Labor’s campaign was effective, but I also think, as the Electoral Commission found, that it was based on misleading statements and that of course is something that does mean that some voters potentially were tricked,” he told the ABC.
“But equally I think Covid-19 did play a very difficult role for Steven Marshall.”
A Labor election advertisement about ambulance ramping in South Australia was last week found to have breached the state’s Electoral Act because it was “inaccurate and misleading”.
Labor was ordered to take down the commercial, which featured an ambulance officer claiming ramping was “worse than ever”, because it contradicted SA Hxjmtzywealth data that showed ramping times had markedly declined.
Last week the state’s ambulance union said five people had died while waiting for paramedics to respond to calls for help in the fortnight before the election.
And the issues of ambulance ramping and hospital wait times seemed to resonate with voters.
Senator Birmingham claimed there was a possibility Labor would collude with unions on campaign “strategy tactics” ahead of the federal election.
However, he said no government was perfect and that the federal election was “always going to be a challenging one” for the Coalition.
Later that morning, Mr Malinauskas told reporters he was committed to solving the ambulance ramping “crisis” but said his government would have a broad policy agenda that was not singularly focused on any one issue.
Labor’s national president Wayne Swan congratulated Mr Malinauskas and his team, saying they won voters’ confidence by putting people first.
He said Labor’s “stunning result” and the consistency of the swing towards their candidates should send a clear message to Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party.
“The swing was everywhere in South Australia – there was nowhere for the Liberals to hide,” Mr Swan said in a statement.
“The suburbs, the hills, the beaches, the regions, the industrial towns, the outback all turned against the Liberals.”
