Greens on board for hills seat battle: The Robert Simms campaign story
The pressure is on the SA Greens to prove their relevance at the 2026 state election as minor parties and independents come at leader Robert Simms from the left and the right. Watch the exclusive video interview.
Robert Simms, leader of the South Australian Greens and the party’s only parliamentary representative in the Legislative Council, is pulling out the stops to secure more power in the upper house at this year’s state election.
He particularly has the electorate of Heysen in the Adelaide Hills in the party’s sights saying it has its best shot at unseating current Liberal MP Josh Teague to gain a lower house member.
While not up for re-election, Simms is leading the charge for his party, which saw its power effectively halved last year when Tammy Franks spectacularly quit the left-wing outfit.
In her place is Melanie Selwood, the lead Legislative Council candidate for the Greens. She resigned from the Adelaide Hills Council in May when Franks quit the Greens to take up the cause.
Simms hopes the party’s number two candidate will also land a seat in the upper house. Katie McCusker has those hopes pinned on her, hoping to be successful after running for the lower house seat of Dunstan in 2024’s by-election.
Asked how Simms was approaching this election, with the party beginning to resemble a more mainstream and moderate choice among the growing popularity of the left- and right-wing options for voters, he said the Greens “have always been mainstream”.
You might like
“I think most South Australians care about the environment, and we’ve been reminded of how important that is through the toxic algal bloom we’ve been dealing with,” he told InDaily in an exclusive video interview.
“I think South Australians agree that everybody should have a right to a roof over their head, a place to call home.
“I think South Australians agree that people should have access to quality healthcare, quality education. These aren’t radical ideas.”
It’s not just the Legislative Council that the SA Greens are keen on. Dunstan is being targeted as a priority, with Christel Mex – “she’s got a very distinctive name and a strong brand locally” as the candidate there.
At the Dunstan by-election, McCusker secured a 5.5 per cent swing towards the party, giving her 19.2 per cent of the total first preference vote and effectively delivering a history-making win for current MP: Labor’s Cressida O’Hanlon.
But Simms told InDaily the “key seat” for the Greens in the 2026 election is Heysen. Genevieve Dawson-Scott — a Bridgewater local and an early childhood educator — is running there for the “seat that we believe that we can win”.
Stay informed, daily
Simms is leading the party’s campaign amidst a dramatic shift in national politics, which is showing signs of changing the landscape in South Australia.
New polling shows right-wing party One Nation leapfrogged the state Liberals in terms of first preference votes — 20 per cent to 19 per cent.
And on the party’s left flank is the SA Socialists. While unable to run candidates under the party banner this election, it is backing independents, including a pro-Palestine activist who is taking on Premier Peter Malinauskas in the seat of Croydon.
| SA Greens policies |
|---|
| Dump the North Adelaide Golf Course redevelopment. |
| Scrap public school materials and services charges and introduce a free breakfast program for all state primary and secondary schools. |
| Impose a state-based ‘Big Bank Levy’ at a rate of 0.1 per cent of total liabilities per quarter on the five biggest banks operating in South Australia. |
| Raise the refined mineral and mineral ore concentrate royalty rates to 20 per cent (up from 3.5 per cent and 5 per cent). |
| Raise the petroleum royalty rate to 25 per cent (up from 10 per cent). |
| Phase out pokies in SA by 2030, and impose a 65 per cent flat tax on all gaming machines to pay for the phase-out. |
| Complete tram extensions to Norwood and North Adelaide. |
| Introduce 50-cent public transport fares. |
| Introduce free ambulance cover for SA pensioners and concession holders. |
A call for the state government to build 20,000 public homes via the Housing Trust over the next four years is one of the party’s more ambitious pre-election policies.
While acknowledging his role is more of an agitator as a smaller party than a lawmaker, Simms said the policy would cost about $6.7 billion, and that it was necessary as “we’re in the middle of a housing emergency”.
“[The Malinauskas government] have not been building the public housing that we need at scale to get the housing crisis under control,” Simms said.
“We’re in the middle of the worst housing crisis that we’ve seen in generations, and so having a public builder that can actually build the stock that we need — and we’ve said 20,000 homes over four years — I think that’s long overdue.”
Asked where the homes would be built, Simms said, “We haven’t gone into that level of detail, and I don’t propose to do so”.
“One of the things we’ve said is that this is something that we will be urging the next government to do,” he said.
“I recognise I’m not going to be in government, but I see myself as being a key player in the upper house, and we’re going to push the government to do these developments.”
