Ben was joined by Intifar Chowdhury and Anthony Zougras to bring the podcast up to speed on South Australian politics before the state election on March 21. They discussed the decline in support for the Liberal Party, the emergence of One Nation, and Peter Malinauskas’ dominance in the state.
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Ben: Welcome to the Tally Room podcast. I’m Ben Raue. The South Australian state election is due later this month. The first term Labor government is riding high in the polls, but somehow that isn’t the main story of the election campaign. Instead, South Australia has become the first test of the surge of support for One Nation in national and state polls since late 2025.
For today’s podcast, we’ll bring you up to speed on South Australian politics, looking at political events over the last four years that have brought South Australia to this point. My first guest is Intifar Chowdhury. Interfar is a lecturer in government at Flinders University. Hello, Intifar.
Intifar: Hi.
Ben: And my second guest is Anthony Zougras. Anthony is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Adelaide and is the host of A History of Australia podcast. Hello, Anthony.
Anthony: Hey Ben.
Ben: So, Peter Malinauskas led Labor to a comfortable victory in 2022, after just four years of Liberal government in South Australia. Since that election, the position of the ALP in the state has become stronger, to the point where polls in late 2025 were pointing towards a landslide similar in scale to some recent state elections in Western Australia. At the same time, the Liberal Party has lurched from scandal to scandal. Intifar, is this big Labor lead more about the actions of the Malinauskas government or the Liberal opposition?
Intifar: Ben, I think it’s both but the size of the lead really makes sense once you factor in the Liberals. So governments can get rewarded for being competent, for being steady but you know usually this level of landslide level polling doesn’t really happen unless the alternative looks like relatively, I would say unconvincing. And I think that’s the problem of the Liberal Party. And of course, since 2022, what we have seen, the Labor Party, the incumbent party has been quite disciplined, I would say, low drama at times as well. But at the same time, the Liberals have lurched from one self-inflicted problem to the next.
So the story isn’t just that Labor is doing really well, but it’s also that the voters are finding it really, really difficult, they’re struggling to imagine a credible change in government.
Anthony: I have to completely agree there. I think when you look at the Liberal Party here in South Australia, most people will be looking at their changes in leaders in the last three to four years, going from all the way back with Marshall going on to David Speirs who’s now running for Black as an independent and then Tarzia, into Hurn. It’s just been a lot of changes, doesn’t really inspire confidence to the average voter that there’s stability there, which is what they like to see from the government. Whereas Labor, for the most part, has remained stable and the areas where they might seem unstable haven’t really captured the public’s ire – the resignations of a few of their more senior ministers and MPs would be the only place where maybe that’s caught a few eyebrows but it’s nothing compared to the Liberal Party.
Ben: And the Liberal Party hasn’t just had changes of leaders, it’s also had a number of like scandals, right? Like David Speirs kind of happened after his leadership ended. We’ve had a couple of Liberal MPs facing issues that have landed them in court and have resulted in them no longer being members of the Liberal Party. you know, there’s been, it doesn’t seem like they’ve really had the space to be able to, you know, present themselves as a credible alternative. And it’s often hard when you’re a first term opposition.
So not only have we had opinion polls showing that Labor is in a strong position, but we’ve also had a couple of by-election results. And this has been remarkable because usually you don’t get governments gaining seats from oppositions at by-elections, but we’ve had two in South Australia, both former leader’s seats. And, you know, in the first case, it was considered a very marginal seat in Dunstan where Labor gained that. But when Labor gained David Speirs’ seat of Black, that was quite a shock, it was a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
Intifar: I think it’s really interesting that you talk about the by-elections, Ben, because I think by-elections are when you have some sort of like midterm grievances coming up. So you would expect some anti-government swings, some big protest votes crystallising against the government. But instead, those two by elections, although Dunstan is quite marginal and Black, David Speirs’ Black. But, you know, we saw in both of those by-elections that the government actually crystallised the vote. And it really tells you something that, you know, this is well beyond what you would expect for a normal second term government.
And yeah, it shows that it’s about relative credibility. So how much credibility you have in the alternatives and that people are trying to sort of like think about an alternative in the Liberals, but just failing to do that.
Ben: It’s interesting that there are some parallels here with Western Australia as I mentioned in the introduction that I do wonder about with these smaller states when the Liberal Party has had these moments of crisis that they don’t have a lot to fall back on. You know, they don’t have a lot of MPs, have a lot of options for leaders. Their bench isn’t very deep.
And I wonder if that’s also contributing to it because we don’t see it as much in the big east coast states. I mean the Victorian Liberals have always been a mess but they haven’t had this kind of moment of severe crisis that you see in South Australia or Western Australia. I do wonder about the New South Wales Liberals if Chris Minns keeps doing quite well.
Anthony: I think looking at the bench of the Liberals here in South Australia, I think that is an issue in some areas. I mean, if you look at the leaders they have put forward, Tarzia is someone who’s been around for a bit. He’s obviously not the charismatic politician, doesn’t give the same image as Peter Malinauskas, for instance. But he never really tried to. He tried to just show an idea of stability and alternative and that didn’t really work out.
And Hurn is someone who, from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen throughout the state, does actually inspire a bit more confidence than the previous SA Liberal leaders. I think the latest polls actually show her with a net positive approval vote, it’s very, very minor. So it’s kind of showing that there may be some candidates there in that Liberal party who can lead and who can do something, but it’s the overall issue of the party that’s kind of dragging them down.
Ben: The thing about Ashton Hurn’s popularity is interesting because it makes me think of Kristina Keneally in New South Wales in 2011, because I think the history has come down to us that she wasn’t a very good politician or that, you know, she wasn’t very effective or any of kind of stuff. Actually, there is a lot of evidence at the time that her personal ratings were fine, like, people didn’t hate her, they just were done with the government and it didn’t matter what the government did basically. And it didn’t matter how much they might personally like her, they weren’t going to vote for them. And I do think sometimes parties can get to that point. I think it happened a little bit with the WA Liberals, I think it could be happening now that people could be like, yeah, she seems alright, but like doesn’t change anything for me.
Anthony: Yeah, I’d very much agree. I think if this was happening in the next term of the Labor government and Hurn was in a lot earlier, she might have the ability to right the ship as it were. But I definitely think, despite her relative popularity, put in as leader this close to the election as well just does no favours. It’s very hard to right a ship with only three to four months before the iceberg.
Ben: What have been some of the big issues that have been dominating South Australian politics recently?
Intifar: On paper they are what you would expect, health, housing, cost of living, infrastructure, all the usual sort of state election pressure points are there. But I think what’s striking is that none of them have actually really stuck to the government in a decisive way. By that I mean like, yes, sure, there are criticisms, but it hasn’t really coalesced into a strong, it’s time to throw them out kind of mood.
And again, this is really where the contrast matters, right? I think Malinauskas has avoided cultural politics, has been largely competent, would say, kept the focus on discipline and delivery. I think on a more sort of competitive environment that might get you at best modest approval, but really in this environment where, again, the alternative does not seem as viable, it is proving I would say incredibly powerful.
Anthony: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. I think yeah, if we look at the biggest issues obviously ramping is one that the liberals are trying to get stick with the Malinauskas government considering ⁓ the government’s promises back in the 2022 election around that area But that doesn’t seem to be sticking We also see a lot with housing. Housing’s been a big issue, but people seem to think that the Malinauskas government is at least doing something satisfactory there, so that’s not sticking.
I think there have been small issues that have appeared where the Malinauskas government has stumbled, The Writers Week scandal some stuff with the parklands is it, but they’re very small and the big issue stuff your health care your your infrastructure your public transport which has been talked about a lot but isn’t really a major focus policy-wise they’re areas where the government is doing.
I think people seem to believe the government’s doing satisfactory and so they’re quite happy to keep moving along with that and the Liberals aren’t proposing a vast or different or very effective alternative in many of those policy areas.
Ben: Intifar, I know you do a lot of work around young voters. ⁓ I assume a lot of the trends are similar to what we see around the country, but how, age is playing into this election at the moment. particularly, you know, housing was mentioned there.
Intifar: Yeah, I haven’t really seen any like age specific breakdowns, Ben, especially from this year. But I would be surprised if the surge in One Nation is coming from a younger base.
Obviously, there were some articles here and there based on qualitative data that says that some mostly men are sort of cosying up to One Nation just because of the sort of like simple answers that they give to to big questions such as housing, right? If housing is your problem, tackle immigration, for example. So I think, yeah, some young young men mostly are finding comfort in seeing One Nation as an alternative. But as a bloc, I don’t think the youth vote will favor One Nation as much. And in South Australia as well, I think the conservative vote is most likely to fracture in like outer suburban, regional and rural areas. So some areas to look at are Barker, Spence, for example, Grey perhaps as well.
So I think it might be interesting to see how that happens. The other thing about young voters that I would like to add is Independents young voters do tend to be quite volatile, meaning, you know, from election to election, they can shop around, look at the alternatives, and it’s not always major or established parties and I think in some seats, you know, like Hammond, for example, Finniss, et cetera, Stuart as well, independents are riding high and I feel like that gets quite underestimated in statewide polls where we’re kind of pulling all the independents together in one bucket. So I think there is a real threat that is coming from independents towards the Liberals, and I think young voters might have a role to play there.
Ben: Now, not every state poll gives us demographic breakdowns, but there is a great Demos AU poll from kind of early February, which does have a breakdown of gender, age, some other factors as well.
It shows this thing that we see a lot, which is the Labor primary vote tends to be very stable across different demographics. They do well amongst young people, well amongst older people, men, women, you know, homeowners and renters and all of that. But on a two party preferred basis, they do very differently because of the makeup of everyone else. But, you know, it is interesting to look here. Again, Labor does about the same with men and women.
The Greens do much better with women than men. One Nation and Liberals are neck and neck with both. But you know, it’s not like One Nation isn’t doing okay with women. They’re getting 17% of the vote with women. Amongst young people, the Greens are doing very well, 27% amongst under 35s. That’s actually the one demographic where the Labor primary vote is down, 35% for Labor, and One Nation’s in fourth place. The Liberals do a bit better than One Nation there.
But once you get over 35, One Nation is out polling the Liberals. And they do appear, the Liberals do a little bit better with the 55 plus group where the Greens vote is very low. There’s that Gen X and older millennial vote, the 35 to 54 age group, where One Nation has the biggest lead over the Liberal Party. And then they also have stuff here around education level and housing. And we did a podcast recently about the impact of housing on politics. And we kind of predicted that the Liberal Party still is doing better with One Nation amongst people who own their home outright, but amongst mortgage holders, they do neck and neck.
And then amongst renters, both One Nation and the Greens are outpolling the Liberals among renters. So I think what’s happening here is younger renters are swinging to the Greens, older renters are swinging to One Nation. Labor’s still doing okay, but not as well with that demographic as, you know, Labor does much better with the people who own their home outright. So kind of, I mean, I think it largely tells a story that we were kind of expecting, but what are your thoughts, Intifar?
Intifar: I don’t think it’s very different from what we saw in the 2025 federal election, where, you know, younger voters like young, young voters, so younger millennials and Gen Z voters tend to support minor parties like Greens and also overwhelmingly Gen Z, particularly overwhelmingly independents.
Can I ask if this polling question is independents a category as well?
Ben: There’s an other candidates category that covers everyone outside Labor, One Nation, Liberal, Green. So that will cover independents, but also cover those minor parties. The other candidates group does better with the over 55s. And it also does, yeah, it doesn’t do very well amongst mortgage holders.
Intifar: Yeah, I think housing is an interesting sort of cleavage even among younger people. By younger people, let’s look at millennials, the younger generation. So at this stage, I think they’re between 31 to 45, correct me if I’m wrong. But yeah, some who are mortgage holders, some who are renters. And you’re absolutely right. We saw in the federal election that those who are renters definitely tend to support Greens more than those who are mortgage holders or own their home outright, although that’s a very small fraction of that population. But yeah, I think it will be interesting to see how the One Nation vote shakes up amongst this group as well.
I mean, I would be surprised if there is an overwhelming amount of support for One Nation. But then again, you know, with statewide polling. I’m usually a little bit skeptical because of, you know, I think in state level elections, the individual seats and the makeup, not just the demographic but also the geographical makeup, the education, there are multiple factors that intersect, right? And the regional voters tend to be quite homogenous in their sort of like traits, like acquired traits, like education, occupation, et cetera. So I think there’s that to look out for as well.
Ben: One thing I’ve noticed that is quite different to the Western Australian election in 2021 was that became, you know, it wasn’t just that Labor dominated the Liberal Party, but they also dominated the Greens. You know, it was a bad election for the Greens. It wasn’t an election where the minor party vote was particularly high. It’s just Labor just dominated everywhere. Whereas in South Australia now, on a two party preferred basis, Labor’s doing pretty well. Like most of the recent polls has them around 60%.
Last year, there were some that had them in the mid 60s. But, you know, the Greens are polling well above what they polled at last election. 11, 12, 13 percent. And so the Labor primary vote in some of these polls is lower than it was at the last election. Certainly not miles above. If they’re winning seats, they’re winning them because they’re getting more preferences and because the Liberal vote is splintering. And that brings us to One Nation.
So, you know, the One Nation story kind of started federally. And, you know, South Australia hasn’t been a particularly good state for One Nation in the past. Sarah Game was elected to the Legislative Council for them in 2022, but is no longer a member of the party. She’s formed her own party now that’s contesting the election. But, you know, it’s not been their heartland state by any means, but it’s effectively become their first test.
And we’ve seen Cory Bernardi, former Liberal Senator who became the leader of his own right wing minor party in the Senate as their lead candidate for the upper house. Anthony, are there South Australia specific things going on here or is this just the first case study of the national trend?
Anthony: So it’s interesting to look at because I think a lot of people would say it’s a lot of national trend coming into South Australia specifically. But I think it’s almost, I don’t want say exaggerated, but exemplified. by the South Australian scenario of a very, very stagnant declining Liberal Party. And it gives One Nation a position to really move in and take over those votes and appear as a genuine alternative as an opposition party.
Before the national polling, I don’t think One Nation really saw itself as a genuine alternative in this state. If you look at what they were putting forward prior to these big news stories of One Nation is taking over, it was very similar to what they always put out. Carlos Quaremba was their initial lead candidate. He’s a councillor down in Victor Harbor.
A lot of their candidates were just regular people, same type of people you would expect from a One Nation candidate across many different elections. So it was kind of the same old same old there, but as these new things came out, we saw the change from Quaremba to Cory Bernardi. As you mentioned, he’s now the lead candidate for the Legislative Council, but also they put a lot more candidates out there running in every seat. I think the national trend is affecting it, but now One Nation is trying to turn it into a state-specific thing here. So you can kind of see that transforming in a way in this last month.
Ben: Intifar, you mentioned before about the kind of regional split, but it does seem like One Nation support is most likely to be outside Adelaide or the outer suburbs of Adelaide.
Intifar: I think those seats are where One Nation could actually end up getting seats because essentially knocking off the Liberals from the two party preferred competition. And I think the issue with One Nation is that South Australia, as you mentioned, is not the best place to test their viability to test whether this nationwide surge in polls will translate into actual votes because, you know, there’s a strong incumbent in the Labor Party. the conservatives tend to be, I would argue, a little bit more moderate in their conservatism than other parts of Australia and then regional and outer suburban areas are not as populated.
There are some seats to look at, like I would be looking at Barker, Gray, Spence, et cetera, where, you know, literally squeezing Liberal Party out of the two party preferred competition, but also messing up with the preferences and how preferences might flow to the major parties. Bernardi, for example, said that, you know, we’re not going to be making any deals. I don’t know how serious he was about that. But people don’t tend to follow how to vote cards as well as much.
So I think like there is a real question of how preferences are going to flow. So they’re to scramble up preferences and it’ll be interesting to see how the conservative vote is going to fracture particularly in these regional areas.
Anthony: In talking about fracturing, there’s a significant amount of minor right-wing parties who though they don’t really have much chance of going to two party preferred, they will take preferences. Fair Go, Sarah Game’s new party, there’s United Voice Australia, there’s Family First and the Australian Family Party who have both been polling in the polls that mention them, not too badly, and that could eat into One Nation’s preferencing in various seats. I’ve also been hearing talk about Elizabeth being a potential spot where One Nation may have success, but I’m not too confident on that, but I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about it.
Ben: One Nation probably does best in rural areas, but they often do quite well in those underprivileged sort of outer suburban fringe areas. So somewhere like Elizabeth seems quite plausible. And we’re gonna talk about that more in depth in next week’s episode.
The preferences thing with the Liberal Party and One Nation I found fascinating because One Nation is out there kind of saying we’re not doing deals, we don’t even like that we have to do preferences, all that kind of thing. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party, I think people have this expectation from the 1990s when John Howard refused to preference One Nation and it kind of locked One Nation out that that sort of thing would happen again.
And I’ve been saying for a while now, One Nation has normalised themselves as the right wing minor party, as the mirror image to the Greens in a way that wasn’t really true in 1998.
You know, the Liberal Party did a preference deal with One Nation for the Senate in 2025, federally. And then what do you see? You see this press release from the South Australian Liberals going, oh don’t believe what you’re hearing. But what they’re denouncing is the idea that they would be preferencing Labor over One Nation. The message from the Liberal Leader’s office was, no, we’re not trying to hurt One Nation. We want to work with you guys. We want to swap preferences, blah, blah, blah.
So I think that is showing that yes, okay, they’re under threat from One Nation, but the fact they’re under threat from One Nation means they are competing, they’re trying to hold people in the Liberal tent who are considering switching to One Nation. And in that kind of scenario, whether or not those preferences end up flowing, they are a symbol. They send a signal about where you stand.
And I think for a lot of people in the Liberal Party, they feel like they need to send a signal that they can work with One Nation, that they have sympathy for One Nation, which, you know, if the Liberal Party falls into third in some of these seats and they’re directing preferences to One Nation, because, Intifar you were saying not a lot of people follow how-to-votes, and that is true for most parties, but Liberal voters are pretty solid about doing what they’re told. I think you would see quite high rates of Liberal preferences flowing to One Nation. And, you know, one of the things that’s so interesting here is they’re getting squeezed in the cities in their marginal seats by Labor. But then in the rural safe seats, they should be able to retreat to. Then you’ve got One Nation.
Anthony: Yeah, I completely agree. I’ve been I’ve been kind of going through last night and this morning all the how-to-vote cards and it’s very clear that yeah the Liberals have preferenced One Nation over Labor. Often that doesn’t mean they’re preferencing them directly after whereas Labor in their how-to-vote cards you’ll see them preference the Greens straight after themselves. So it’ll go Labor, Greens, other parties. There’s a few seats where that isn’t true. But for the most part the Greens are very high up on Labor’s preference lists.
For Liberals it is yeah One Nation, then Labor though often as I mentioned, not exactly second. Interestingly enough, Labor has shown that it does not want to work with One Nation at all. I’ve gone through all of their how-to-vote cards and on all but two, that being David Speirs in Black and Nick McBride in McKillop, they’ve essentially put One Nation last in every single seat. So they’ve signaled, no, we are not going to work with One Nation. We do not even want to think about that as a possibility.
Ben: It’s not surprising. I did notice on the Labor how to vote for the upper house. Now, they might be doing different things in different seats. That’s possible. That’s certainly something you see in New South Wales where they will be more enthusiastically preferencing the Greens in the inner city and then in the outer suburbs or the rural areas they’ll do something different. But I noticed that Sarah Game was on their how to vote card. And I do wonder if there’s an element for them, much like the Victorian Labor government has been able to work with.
They want alternatives to the Greens, right? They don’t want to be reliant on the Greens. In the past, NSW Labor worked with Fred Nile or the Shooters or people like that. If I was Peter Malinauskas and I was looking at a situation where they could win five seats in the upper house again, that gives them 10 out of 22. You know, the Greens have the numbers to pass legislation, but if I was them, I’d want an alternative that gives me the flexibility to go one way or the other.
Anthony: I had a bit of a talk with a few people in the Labor Party about that preference because it interested me as well when I saw it last night. Liberals have Fair Go as second on the how to vote cards for the upper house as well, which is a very interesting position for that party to be in.
Ben: The One Nation polling does make me think of the 2018 South Australian election when you had Nick Xenophon, SA Best, very different to One Nation, of course. And they weren’t polling quite as well as One Nation’s polling now. One Nation’s actually doing better than they were then, but they had a very even vote across the state and their vote ended up being a bit lower than they expected and they didn’t win a single seat. And I do think one of those factors you were talking about, those individual seats, is it’s one thing to say, I vote for this party.
When it comes to election day. Nick Xenophon’s not on the ballot. Pauline Hanson’s not on the ballot. But you have your own particular local member who has a local presence. And I think it chips a certain number of voters off. And that might be the thing that saves the Liberal Party in some of these rural seats.
Intifar: And if I can add, I think it’s also important that, you know, why voters are preferencing One Nation in the polls, like right now. So is it like a protest vote? Is it like, you know, Liberal voters who are going like, the Liberal Party is doing so badly. Of course, I can’t cross the road over to Labor. So I’m going to protest by going to One Nation. But then again, what kind of alternative is One Nation? Is it like a policy at, you know, a party with proper discipline, a party with serious candidates, a party that can actually provide policies for the issues that voters are concerned about? Or is it more like a symbolic endorsement of just a protest kind of party? I think it would be interesting to see that in the South Australian election really, is how serious people are in throwing their weight behind One Nation.
Ben: I think the whole country is going to be watching, frankly more than the reelection of the Malinauskas government. I think that’s the thing that’s going to be drawing national attention to South Australia later this month.
Anthony: I think I agree with the independents being a bigger threat in various seats than those state polling can connect to. I think there is a lot of places where independents actually will have a strong vote. And I also agree with what you said Ben earlier, that I think some local Liberal members will hold swings to themselves. There’ll be people who stay because of their local member, as opposed to national or state swings that swing them to Labor or to One Nation.
So I think especially with state elections you have to look seat by seat sometimes and see who the actual people in those seats are and who the challengers are. And also in some cases who Labor’s putting up to replace certain MPs. I think that’ll be important as well because I think in some places some of the candidates they’re putting forward to replace those who are resigning might not be seen in the same light as those that were there before them.
Ben: So that’s about it for this episode of the Tally Room podcast. Thank you, Anthony and Intifar for joining me. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks, Intifar.
Anthony: Thanks, Ben.
Intifar: Thanks, Ben.
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