South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas has used Labor’s landslide state election victory to urge a kinder and more inclusive politics, reaching out to disaffected One Nation voters and promising to work across politics lines in his second term.
The Labor leader increased his majority in Saturday’s vote, with One Nation’s support surging and the Liberal opposition reduced to a handful of seats.
Late on Saturday night Labor was on track to win at least 32 of the parliament’s 47 seats. The Liberals looked set to win at least four seats, and at least a further four will go to independents. One Nation looked likely to win the seat of Hammond in Murray Bridge, with several seats in the balance.
Quoting the poet Henry Lawson in his speech to the Labor faithful, Malinauskas urged South Australians to be proudly patriotic and to care for others.
“When we all combine, we can achieve anything,” he said. “When we work together, diversity has always been our greatest strength.
“If we focus on what unites us – a shared love of living in a peaceful, prosperous place, a state full of hard-working people that value care and compassion – then we can harness this moment with our newfound confidence.”
Labor secured nearly 38% of the primary vote, ahead of One Nation on 21% and the Liberals on just 19%.
Promising One Nation MPs would be “landmines” for Labor in the parliament, Pauline Hanson said she felt “vindicated” by the results. One Nation’s state leader, Cory Bernardi, the former Liberal senator, was elected to the upper house with one or two party colleagues.
“I think the rest of Australia is going to be watching what’s happening here tonight,” Hanson said, pointing to the upcoming Farrer byelection and the Victorian election in November.
“This is the low tide. Once they really get to look at the votes they put … I believe that our vote will rise even more. So wait and see what happens next week.”
The opposition leader, the first-term Liberal MP Ashton Hurn, phoned Malinauskas to concede defeat before 9.30pm.
Amid the party’s wipeout, Hurn’s predecessor, Vincent Tarzia, lost his seat of Hartley.
“It’s a tough night for the Liberals,” Hurn said. “There’s absolutely no doubt about it, that things are tough.
“And lessons must be learnt. There are a lot of things that we need to reflect on.”
Luke Mansillo, a politcal scientist at the University of Sydney, said the results signalled a major shift in Australian politics, with One Nation close to the support it secured in the 1998 Queensland election, when the party won 11 seats.
“It’s unquestionably a potential realignment of Australian politics. We don’t know about its longevity,” he said.
“There are enough places that Labor has suffered losses to One Nation for the federal government to worry about. Peter Dutton’s strategy of outer urban and regional seat targeting is coming off for One Nation, who can peel off voters the Liberal party could not.”
Labor entered the campaign the clear favourite to win re-election due to the Labor leader’s personal popularity and the chaos and scandal that plagued the Liberals for much of the term. It held 29 of the 47 state seats going into Saturday’s election, with five in the hands of independents.
More than 35% of the state voted before election day, a record result, and up from about 17% at the 2022 poll.
The Liberals turned to Hurn late last year after internal polling suggested the party was careering towards an election wipeout, making the 35-year-old the party’s fourth leader in four years.
Malinauskas now has a mandate to deliver a second-term agenda centered on building more homes, making public education free and keeping children away from screens.
The premier faced scrutiny during the campaign about the response to the algal bloom crisis. He conceded the government had failed to fix ambulance ramping at hospitals – his signature promise at the 2022 election.
Hanson spent much of the past week campaigning in regional seats with Bernardi.
Despite the Liberals directing supporters to put One Nation ahead of Labor, Hanson did not return the favour, opting instead to run open tickets on their how-to-vote cards in the state.
The election was also the first under the state’s new electoral laws, which ban donations to political parties.
Federal Labor will be watching the results closely but the federal Coalition, including the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, and the new Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, will be even more intensely focused on Hanson’s results.
Counting was set to continue until 1am on Sunday morning.
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