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South Australia State Election 2018

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South Australia State Election 2018 RESEARCH PAPER SERIES, 2018–19 17 JULY 2018 South Australia state election 2018 Dr Nathan Church Politics and Public Administration Section Contents List of abbreviations ....................................................................... 2 Introduction ................................................................................... 2 Background .................................................................................... 2 2014 election, party changes and by-elections .................................. 2 SA redistribution and electoral boundary changes............................. 4 Changes to the Legislative Council voting system .............................. 5 Retiring parliamentarians.................................................................... 6 Key campaign issues ....................................................................... 7 Electricity supply and price ................................................................. 7 Health care .......................................................................................... 7 The Xenophon factor ........................................................................... 8 Other minor parties............................................................................. 8 Election results ............................................................................... 9 New and defeated parliamentarians............................................. 10 Factors in the result...................................................................... 11 The redistribution.............................................................................. 11 Longstanding incumbent government .............................................. 11 Lack of electoral success for Nick Xenophon’s SA Best .................... 11 ISSN 2203-5249 List of abbreviations AC: Australian Conservatives Party ALP: Australian Labor Party DIG: Dignity Party/Dignity for Disability Party ECSA: Electoral Commission of South Australia EDBC: Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission GRN: Australian Greens Party GVT: Group Voting Ticket Ind. Independent LC: Legislative Council Lib.: Liberal Party MLC: Member of the Legislative Chamber NXT: Nick Xenophon Team SA: South Australia Introduction South Australia (SA) has a bicameral parliament consisting of the House of Assembly (47 members) and the Legislative Council (22 members). Since 2001, parliaments have sat for fixed terms, with elections held on the third Saturday in March every four years for the entire House of Assembly and half of the Legislative Council.1 Accordingly, the SA Governor prorogued parliament on 19 December 2017, with the writs issued on 17 February 2018 for a 17 March general election.2 Background 2014 election, party changes and by-elections Despite suffering a 1.7 per cent swing against it, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Government was returned in the 2014 election, securing 23 seats and the support of Independent MPs Geoff Brock and Martin Hamilton-Smith, the latter having controversially left the Liberal Party to take up a ministerial role with the Government (see Table 1).3 Within the Legislative Council, the ALP and Liberals each had four members elected, with the remaining three positions being filled by Family First, the Greens and the Independent Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) candidate John Darley (see Table 2). 1. Constitution Act 1934 (SA). 2. Constitution (Prorogation of Parliament) Proclamation 2017 (SA); Electoral Commission SA (ECSA), 2018 State Election timetable, website, accessed 10 May 2018. 3. ABC News, ‘Martin Hamilton-Smith quits Liberals to back South Australian Labor Government’, website, 28 May 2014, accessed 17 May 2018. South Australia state election 2018 2 Table 1: House of Assembly seats won by each party at the 2014 election Party Seats (change from 2010 election) Female members Male Members ALP 23 (-3) 9 14 Lib. 22 (+4) 3 19 Ind. 2 (-1) 0 2 Total 47 12 35 Table 2: Total Legislative Council seats won by each party at the 2014 election Party Seats (won in 2010) Total seats Female members Male Members ALP 4 (3) 7 1 6 Lib. 4 (4) 8 1 7 GRN 1 (1) 2 1 1 Family First 1 (1) 2 0 2 NXT 1 (0) 1 0 1 DIG 0 (1) 1 1 0 Ind. 0 (1) 1 0 1 Total 11 (11) 22 4 18 Two by-elections occurred following the 2014 general election: on 6 December 2014 following the death of Dr Bob Such (Ind.–Fisher); and in 2015 following the resignation of former Liberal Party leader Iain Evans (Lib.–Davenport). ALP candidate Nat Cook was elected in Fisher by a margin of nine votes to increase the Government’s narrow lower house majority; however, the Opposition successfully held Davenport. During 2017, both major parties had members resign to sit as independents. The Deputy Speaker, Frances Bedford, resigned from the ALP in March 2017 after losing the party’s preselection for Florey to Government minister and sitting member for Playford, Jack Snelling.4 Snelling later retired from the parliament but Bedford resisted subsequent overtures to return to the ALP.5 The Liberal Party lost sitting member Duncan McFetridge in May 2017, who became an Independent after losing his preselection for the seat of Morphett.6 Shortly after this, Liberal member for Mount Gambier, Troy Bell, was forced to resign from the party in August 2017 after being charged with 26 counts of misappropriating funds while working 4. ABC News, ‘Frances Bedford points finger at Labor’s “faceless men” as she quits party’, website, 28 March 2017, accessed 10 May 2018. 5. ABC News, ‘SA Health Minister Jack Snelling resigns from Cabinet and will not contest March election’, website, 17 September 2017, accessed 10 May 2018; T Fedorowytsch, ‘Frances Bedford to contest 2018 South Australian election as an independent’, website, 1 December 2017, accessed 10 May 2018. 6. ABC News, ‘SA MP Duncan McFetridge vows to stand as independent after losing Liberal preselection’, website, 19 June 2017, accessed 10 May 2018. South Australia state election 2018 3 as an education facility manager before entering parliament.7 Bell subsequently contested the 2018 election as an Independent.8 Additionally, John Darley resigned from the NXT in August 2017 and launched a new ‘Advance SA’ party the following month.9 Of these four newly-Independent candidates, only Frances Bedford and Troy Bell were re-elected in 2018. SA redistribution and electoral boundary changes In SA a redistribution of district boundaries is required by law after every election, with the SA Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission (EDBC) determining the most recent redistribution in December 2016.10 A critical aspect of this report was the Commission’s interpretation and implementation of the SA Constitution’s electoral fairness provision, introduced in March 1991.11 The provision stated that: In making an electoral redistribution the Commission must ensure, as far as practicable, that the electoral redistribution is fair to prospective candidates and groups of candidates so that, if candidates of a particular group attract more than 50 per cent of the popular vote (determined by aggregating votes cast throughout the State and allocating preferences to the necessary extent), they will be elected in sufficient numbers to enable a government to be formed.12 The EDBC’s 1991 report identified the inherent challenges in facilitating this objective, stating that ‘a number of factors peculiar to South Australia … combine to isolate large surpluses of conservative rural votes in “enclaves” where the votes cannot be “mixed” effectively with Labor Party votes’.13 The EDBC offered a more pointed analysis 25 years later when its 2016 report declared that ‘there is an innate imbalance, against the Liberal Party, caused by voting patterns in South Australia upon which have been imposed successive redistributions’.14 The ALP’s submission to the EDBC 2016 report contended that the Liberal Party’s inability to successfully win marginal seats led to its 2014 defeat, as opposed to inherent bias in electoral distributions. The ALP also raised concerns regarding malapportionment (of deep historical significance in SA) whereby the 10 per cent permissible tolerance for a district’s quota of electors could be unevenly maximised to weight more conservative rural areas against more populated metropolitan centres.15 Conversely, the Liberal Party suggested in its submission that each major party should be allocated an equal number of safe seats on Commission-prepared electoral pendulums, and that its own marginal seats should be made safer. This could be achieved by ‘unlocking’ Liberal votes from neighbouring safe seats through more fully utilising the flexibility offered by the 10 per cent permissible tolerance of the quota.16 7. N Hunt, ‘Lib MP theft charges’, The Advertiser, 18 August 2017, p 1, accessed 18 May 2018. 8. A Dowdell, ‘Embattled MP: Don’t write me off just yet’, The Advertiser, 16 December 2017, p. 11, accessed 18 May 2018. 9. M Owen, ‘Call for deserting MP to resign from state parliament’, Weekend Australian, 19 August 2017, p. 8, accessed 10 May 2018; N Harmsen, ‘The ex-X men: spurned Nick Xenophon affiliates launch rival party Advance SA ahead of election’, ABC News online, 15 September 2017, accessed 19 March 2018. 10. SA Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission (EDBC), 2016 report of the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, 7 December 2017, accessed 20 March 2018. For a historical overview of redistributions in SA see ECSA, South Australian electoral boundary redistributions 1851–2016, June 2017, accessed 21 May 2018. 11.
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