AARON PATRICK: South Australian election reshapes politics as Labor wins big and One Nation overtakes Liberals

The South Australian Liberal Party lies in ruin today, destroyed by remorseless infighting, a competent and popular Labor premier, and the new third power in Australian politics: One Nation.

In an election result that will likely convince federal Liberals to tack right, the party not so much failed to be competitive as became an irrelevancy across much of the state.

In Adelaide, where the Liberal Party has won only one seat so far, there are seats once considered its heartland where the Liberal vote fell under 10 per cent and the party finished fourth.

“The nice middle suburbs of Adelaide have turned in an extraordinary fashion against the Liberal Party,” elections analyst Antony Green told The Nightly.

Psephologist Kevin Bonham predicts the Liberal Party will emerge with five of the 47 lower house seats, the smallest opposition representation in the six states in absolute and per cent terms.

No statistical anomaly

One Nation received the second-highest number of votes. Even though the result was accurately predicted by polls, Liberals still sounded shocked at their third-place relegation on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

For many, it was to early to articulate a comeback strategy beyond conventional platitudes. All accepted internal conflicts had wreaked huge damage on the party.

“We have got a lot of challenges ahead of us and the first step is to work towards being a united team,” Tom Venning, a Liberal whose federal seat of Grey covers 92 per cent of the state, told The Nightly.

One Nation’s polling surge is not a statistical anomaly. The Coalition’s leaders will now have to accept the last Newspoll, which put federal support for the Coalition at 20 per cent, seven percentage points behind One Nation, and reflects a historic national shift in voting patterns on the right.

‘Farrer will fall’

The consequences will be seen in the federal seat of Farrer, which will fall to One Nation in a by-election on May 9, Mr Green said, based on the South Australian result. Farrer, which was held by former Liberal leader Sussan Ley, stretches across southern NSW from Albury to the South Australian border.

On the left, the Labor Party has thrived despite a low primary vote (35 per cent at the last federal election) by receiving Greens preferences. The same isn’t happening on the other side of the political spectrum.

“You vote One Nation, you get Labor,” former Coalition pollster Mike Turner told The Nightly. “The preferences don’t flow enough. It’s not efficient. Not enough come back to Libs.”

To avoid being One Nationed, the federal Coalition needs to get its primary vote above its right-wing competitor.

The result will likely terrify, or inspire, the federal Opposition into action. Pauline Hanson and One Nation recruit Barnaby Joyce now look as great a threat to the Coalition as the Labor Party.

New Nationals leader Matt Canavan will become even more hostile to an immigration program that has changed the face of Australia.

Liberal leader Angus Taylor will likely follow his conservative instincts and shore up his right flank. The rhetoric against “net zero” climate policies may become more intense.

Threat to Labor

For all its newfound popularity in the magpie state, One Nation looks to have won between two and four lower house seats. It has not emerged as a serious rival for government.

But the Labor Party, despite its overwhelming victory, did not entirely escape the One Nation surge. Labor has gone from a 20 per cent margin to barely holding the seat covering the town of Gawler, north of Adelaide.

The seat, Light, could still fall. Other working-class rural electorates also delivered big swings to One Nation, including Davenport and Elizabeth.

Which suggests Labor shouldn’t celebrate too hard the split on the right, because it could be next.

One Nation’s election campaign wasn’t about “about defeating Labor, it was about destroying the Liberal Party,” Mr Green said. “You destroy the Liberal Party then you turn on Labor.”