South Australia July to December 2022

Abstract

After the March state election, a Labor government was installed after convincingly ousting Steven Marshall's one-term Liberal government, continuing a tradition of short-lived Liberal governments in South Australia. In the second half of 2022, Peter Malinauskas' new government was seeking to bed down its agenda, and was favoured by political circumstances. Generally, there is a common political cycle between elections. In the first stage, a new government will often spend the first six to twelve months conducting reviews, taking stock, and generally blaming its predecessor for policy failures. The second stage, usually in years 2 to 3, focuses on securing policy wins and ‘delivering’. In the final stage, the attention then turns to the imminent election. For Malinauskas, the key was to hit the ground running, while for the new Liberal opposition leader David Speirs, it was a period of review and reflection upon the election loss.

The most pressing concern for the Malinauskas government was the intersection of two key issues: the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the electoral goal of ‘ending the ramping crisis’. In July, the Omicron strain was “biting harder in South Australia than at any time since COVID-19 reached [SA] shores” (The Advertiser, 29 July 2022). At this time, Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier was encouraging South Australians to work from home where possible; but this sat in conflict with the Premier's desire for economic activity to resume, particularly in Adelaide's CBD. The total number of cumulative cases of COVID-19 in July 2022 was over 700,000, and at the peak of July, the number of reported daily cases was at 5,000 per day. After July, there was some respite and a steady decline in reported cases (covid19data.com.au). Data also confirmed that hospitalisations peaked in SA in July (374 cases, 25 July), declined steadily until October (reaching a low of about 30 cases), and then steadily rose again with 255 hospitalisations by the end of the year (covid19data.com.au). Compared with the other states these are relatively small numbers but proportionate to South Australia's population, this was a highly challenging situation.

COVID-19 then placed key strains on already stretched hospital and health resources. Health Minister Chris Picton faced a range of challenges in addressing the issue of ramping – the focal point of the March election. Labor made some headway into reducing the overall ramping levels (ambulances parked or ‘ramped’ outside hospitals), but health systems more generally were under strain. Labor suffered a blow when the Women and Children's Hospital Paediatric Intensive Care Unit lost its accreditation as a training unit (The Advertiser, 2 December 2022) and pressure continued when SA Health's patient records technology went into a “meltdown” (The Advertiser, 29 December 2022). A key stakeholder, the Salaried Medical Officers Association, called for an immediate inspection at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) reflecting its concerns about working conditions. This followed the resignation of Dr Megan Brooks, the RAH's Head of Emergency, whose resignation letter exposed much of the stress facing staff (The Advertiser, 29 December 2022).

The Labor government sees reform of the health system as a long-term project. After the state election, it sacked the then-CEO of Health, Chris McGowan, and in August announced that Dr Robyn Wright (a health executive from WA) would take on this critical role (The Advertiser, 2 August 2022). Facing a myriad of pressures in the health system, Premier Malinauskas acknowledged that it would take “the full four years” to tackle ramping, and argued that the government's plan “includes the biggest boost to resources in the health system that we've ever seen in the history of the state” (The Advertiser, 29 December 2022). Health is likely to remain a central test for his government, not least because it was the centrepiece of their successful electoral strategy.

Child protection remains a fiendishly difficult and ‘wicked’ policy problem, and many governments have struggled to find adequate institutional and systemic responses in light of high-profile cases such as that of Chloe Valentine in 2012. Former SA Police Commissioner Mal Hyde was tasked with investigating the deaths of two children, 6-year-old Charlie Nowland, and 7-year-old Makai Wanganeen earlier in the year. As part of his investigation, Hyde presented a review to the Premier which found that 500 children were potentially at “high risk” (InDaily, 9 November 2022). The Premier charged the Police Commissioner Grant Stevens to initiate contacts with all these affected children, involving numerous relevant agencies. In December, it was reported that 290 of these children had still not been contacted (The Advertiser, 7 December 2022). The Premier was forced to defend this progress arguing that it may take until March 2023, as checks had to be “done methodically” (The Advertiser, 7 December 2022). The Advertiser responded by launching a ‘Save our Kids’ campaign. The opposition was keen to draw attention to the response time, with Shadow Child Protection Minister Josh Teague arguing the government's response was “in the slow lane” (The Advertiser, 7 December 2022). This action raises ongoing public concerns about the state's institutional response to child protection, with Cathy Taylor, who has been CEO of Child Protection for six years, receiving negative media coverage. This remains an ongoing challenge for state governments, and at times has proved challenging for both major parties.

At the end of 2022, the Malinauskas government tackled a different kind of crisis; namely, the extraordinary flooding of the Murray River. Earlier in the year, a ‘rain-bomb’ affected Queensland, and throughout the early parts of 2022, significant levels of rainfall hit NSW, Victoria and the ACT (The Guardian, 25 December 2022). The intense rainfall caused significant flooding. At its peak, up to 220 gigalitres (approximately 88,000 Olympic swimming pools) were heading into SA per day. The floods caused severe damage through river-fronted towns in the Riverland and Murraylands. The slow-moving nature of the crisis enabled the government, towns and communities to respond. Up to 4,000 SA homes (and 200 businesses) were affected by the floods, falling just short of the infamous 1956 floods. During the floods, levees were breached, towns isolated, and in some places evacuations were ordered. The Premier led the response, along with Emergency Services Minister Joe Szakacs. Police Commissioner Grant Stevens was also granted additional powers as a flood emergency was declared (The Advertiser, 22 November 2022). The peak waters arrived over the Christmas period causing much distress and difficulty for affected communities. Multiple compensation packages were devised by the state government, including $51.6 m in compensation along with an initial $4.8 m for immediate flood defences and sandbagging (ABC News, 22 November 2022). Defence forces and Commonwealth support were also at hand, with Defence sending in equipment and personnel in Loxton and Berri in early December (The Advertiser, 16 December 2022). There were, however, concerns that the compensation and support were not getting through to all communities (The Advertiser, 22 November 2022). The clean-up and repair will continue through much of 2023, and the economic cost will cause headaches for Treasurer Stephen Mullighan. Further, the impact of climate change is likely to mean such ‘extraordinary’ natural disasters may well afflict many parts of the nation into the future on a far more frequent basis. The South Australian government may need to find new investment to protect these communities from future flooding events.

The first electoral test faced by the Malinauskas government was the Bragg by-election held on Saturday, 2 July 2022. Bragg comprises Adelaide's leafy eastern suburbs, taking in locales such as Burnside, Glenunga and Wattle Park. It was the Liberal seat with the highest remaining margin (8.2 per cent) in the Adelaide Metropolitan Area following the party's convincing defeat in the March state election (ECSA 2022). The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of embattled former Deputy Premier Vickie Chapman, pending an Ombudsman's report into potential conflicts of interest regarding her handling of a proposal for a deep-sea port off the coast of Kangaroo Island (InDaily, 20 April 2022).

Chapman leaves a reformist legacy, having been the state's first female Deputy Premier and Attorney-General, and having steered through contentious social reforms in the areas of abortion and voluntary euthanasia – which had been left untouched by more socially conservative Labor predecessors in John Rau and Michael Atkinson (ABC News, 19 April 2022). Chapman's other ‘legacy’ is the factional woes which for the last several decades have distracted the Liberal Party from the task of forming government in South Australia. As noted in the previous Chronicle, newly minted Liberal leader David Speirs “declared himself ready to lead a ‘great reset’, aiming to transcend the old ‘factional fights between the Evanses and the Chapmans and the Olsens and the Browns’” (Australian, 27 June 2022). The same day he ascended to the leadership, Chapman, the remaining veteran from this era of factional warfare, overshadowed Speirs' reset by announcing her resignation.

With a sense of repeating history, the vacancy left by Chapman tore open factional wounds around the issue of gender representation within the Liberal caucus. With only two Liberal women serving in the House of Representatives, and having barely fended off campaigns from strong female independents in the safe rural seats of Finniss and Flinders in the March state election, the party faced intense pressure to select a female candidate to replace Chapman. The pressure was exemplified by the touted independent candidacy of former Liberal staffer and intense critic of the party's approach to gender issues, Chelsey Potter, who threatened to contest on a similar platform to successful federal ‘teal’ candidates. Despite this pressure, and Speirs' open support for a female candidate, Chapman's moderate faction threw its support behind lawyer and former consular official, Jack Batty. This drew staunch and open criticism from the conservative wing of the party, which touted its comparatively stronger record on female representation (The Advertiser, 6 June 2022). Seeking to capitalise on divisions, the Labor Party pre-selected lawyer Alice Rolls over its candidate in March, Rick Sarre (InDaily, 8 June 2022).

The election had a strong turnout for a by-election of 83.8 per cent and saw a swing against the Liberals of 2.5 per cent. Premier Malinauskas was quick to claim this as a triumph for his fledgling government, noting the difficulties governments usually face in by-elections (ABC News, 4 July 2022). Despite political point-scoring, this result coupled with Labor victories in traditionally blue-ribbon territory in metropolitan Adelaide in March, and the teal insurgency federally, suggests that the Liberal Party has issues to address in its heartland. Whether Speirs is up to the task might prove a crucial test of his leadership.

Voting closed for elections across all 68 South Australian regional and metropolitan councils on 10 November 2022. Local government elections in South Australia are marked by lower participation rates than those conducted in eastern states due to voluntary voting. Voting is conducted via postal ballot with 34.54 per cent of voters returning ballot packs, continuing an upward trend in participation begun in 2018 (ECSA 2022). The race for Adelaide Lord Mayor drew five candidates including incumbent Sandy Verschoor, former Senator Rex Patrick and former Lord Mayor and Rann government minister, Jane Lomax-Smith (The Advertiser, 7 September 2022). Key issues included the functioning of council, and perennial concerns about balancing heritage and development. Lomax-Smith ultimately prevailed in a tight three-way race marred by allegations of ballot tampering (InDaily, 8 November 2022). How Lomax-Smith manages her relationship with the new state government will have important implications for Malinauskas' push to revitalise the city centre, along with traditional debates regarding heritage and development which have proved thorny for many state governments.

At this point in the political cycle, the Malinauskas government is seeking to solidify its political agenda and establish key achievements over the course of the term. One of the most significant policy announcements in the run-up to the March election was the proposal to consider merging two of South Australia's public universities – the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia (UoA, UNISA). In December, the Premier announced an agreement between these two universities to formalise a merger process. The new institution, if it proceeds, will be called Adelaide University, and would start operating from January 2026. The overall aim is to ultimately create Australia's largest university, and propel the institution into the world's top 50 “within a decade” (The Advertiser, 7 December 2022). In this public statement there was agreement on no net job losses, and a planned intermediary ‘co-leadership’ model. Both the Premier and Treasurer were keen to emphasise the potential economic and financial benefits and the Liberals' education spokesman, John Gardner, was broadly supportive but pushed the government for more transparency around potential costings. A previous attempt to merge these two universities broke down in 2012. The National Tertiary Education Union is ambivalent about the proposal and there are varied views about its desirability, with concerns that “bigger” is not always best (InDaily, 3 June 2022). The state government has invested significant political capital in this project, and the Premier will be keen to see it launched during his first term of office.

Both policies speak volumes about the pitch Malinauskas made to the South Australian public, bold ideas implemented using strong powers of the state, although with potentially high financial costs.

By the end of 2022, and less than a full year in office, Peter Malinauskas had already made a strong, mostly favourable, impression in South Australia.

A politically problematic issue for Malinauskas was Labor's ties with the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union. Controversial union leader John Setka took control over the SA branch but faced allegations of domestic violence and intimidation (Australian Financial Review, 8 September 2022). In the run-up to the state election campaign, the union had donated much needed funds – $125,000 – to the Labor Party. In an embarrassing U-turn, the Premier announced that the donation would be either repaid or donated to charity (The Advertiser, 8 August 2022), highlighting the touchy subject of union ties for former Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association boss turned premier, Malinauskas.

In a favourable review of one of the Premier's speeches – which made the case for government intervention – The Advertiser's Paul Starick drew comparisons between the new Premier and one of the most dominant Liberal icons in the state's history, Thomas Playford (The Advertiser, 9 December 2022). Both seek to drive growth through an industrially-charged, state-driven political economy. For Liberal leader David Speirs, this may prove to be a politically hard act to challenge in the coming years. Overall, The Advertiser's report card for the Premier and his team was generally very positive. It may have scored an ‘E' for its health performance, but in other areas (COVID-19 response, infrastructure) it scored strongly. Moreover, the personable Malinauskas was given an ‘A-’, with Speirs unable to make enough public cut-through with a ‘C' score. Economically, though, 2023 may prove even more challenging for the Malinauskas government (The Advertiser, 21 December 2022).