Independent branded ‘Trojan horse’ gallops ahead in electoral race
A candidate that the Liberals called a “Trojan horse” is poised to steal a lower house seat. Meanwhile, a former councillor who spoke out against a First Nations event last year will likely join One Nation’s ranks in the upper house.
Independent Lou Nicholson is set to win the seat of Finniss from former Liberal shadow minister David Basham, after his party branded her a “Trojan horse” for the Labor party during the campaign.
The Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA) is still counting postal votes for the seat which covers Encounter Bay, including Goolwa and Port Elliott. Nicholson is ahead by about 850 votes, collecting about 59.1 per cent of the vote according to ECSA.
She told InDaily that she had been watching the count but was “trying to just get on with day-to-day life”.
“I can’t control the counting, and I’ve done all I can,” she said.
It is her second run at the regional seat after she came close to stealing it from Basham in 2022, when she won a majority after preferences in all but one polling place. Postal and pre-poll votes gave Basham the win.
At the time of writing, the Liberals were expected to pick up at least four seats: party leader Ashton Hurn’s seat of Schubert in the Barossa, Jack Batty’s metro seat of Bragg, and regional seats for Sam Telfer in Chaffey and Tim Whetstone in Flinders. They are still in contention to pick up two others, according to ECSA results: Stephen Patterson’s Morphett and Josh Teague’s Heysen, which are on a knife-edge.
The Labor party announced its cabinet yesterday after a landslide win on Saturday, but Liberal appointments to a shadow ministry are still a way off, with Liberal spokesperson Heidi Girolamo saying yesterday that Hurn would “work through all of that” after the thousands of remaining votes were counted.
Nicholson is one of three independent candidates poised to join the parliament, with Matt Schultz ahead in the Adelaide Hills seat of Kavel and Travis Fatchen taking Mount Gambier. Fatchen succeeds his former employer, Troy Bell, a former Liberal convicted of fraud and jailed.
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Nicholson said once she was officially elected, she was confident she would be off to a good start, having already met the Premier twice: once for an algal bloom community forum on the Fleurieu and again during the campaign.
She expected to know the result by the afternoon on Monday, March 30.
Her meeting with the Premier, which she shared pictures of on social media in March, was criticised by the Liberal party at the time, with a spokesperson saying independents should not be a “Trojan horse” for the Labor government.
Nicholson said it was a “wholly predictable campaign tactic”.
“It’s never nice to be attacked or have comments like that made about you, but I suppose it’s wholly predictable as well,” she said.
“In that meeting that I had with the premier, I strongly reinforced my independence and the importance of it to me and my community.”
Nicholson said her top priority when elected would be to meet with newly appointed Health Minister Blair Boyer “to highlight the need for immediate investment in our central sterile supply department” at Victor Harbor Hospital and “a transparent plan” for the hospital’s future.
Nicholson also faced a strong One Nation presence in Finniss, with SA state president Carlos Quaremba living in the electorate, who is poised to pick up one of three spots for the Pauline Hanson-led party in the upper house.
Quaremba ran for the seat of Finniss for One Nation in 2022, producing a swing of 4.7 per cent towards the party in 2022.
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This year, One Nation’s Finniss candidate Greg Powell – a retired wine producer – put up a fight and claimed 22.3 per cent of the first preference vote, according to ECSA.
Nicholson said she was “surprised” by the primary vote for One Nation.
“If I’m elected, I will approach that primary vote for One Nation with great curiosity,” she said.
“I think that’s the best way to approach it, because these are people in our community with very real lives. They’ve got very real concerns that they felt One Nation was addressing the best out of all the candidates. That’s something I need to know more about, because these are people that it looks like I will be privileged to represent.”
One Nation candidate Rebecca Hewett will likely fill a third seat for One Nation in the upper house, joining Quaremba and SA One Nation leader Cory Bernardi.
The electoral commission has recorded the party winning a quota of 2.9 as of Thursday morning and has counted about 60 per cent of the upper house votes.
Hewett told InDaily she would not comment on her upper house appointment until the result was finalised. Her website says her top priorities are “tackling the cost-of-living crisis, improving access to essential services, and supporting local industries”.
Hewett ran for One Nation in the seat of Mayo in last year’s federal election, and is a former Mount Barker councillor who gained media attention when she opposed funding a First Nations survival day event in 2025.
At the time, Mount Barker Mayor David Leach said her comments “harmed” First Nations people. Hewett said she was “silenced”.
Survival Day events, held on January 26, draw attention to the British invasion of Aboriginal land rather than celebrating Australia Day.
One seat remains in doubt of the 11 legislative council spots up for grabs, with Labor’s Clare Scriven currently ahead in the race.
Scriven was announced as the Primary Industries, Regional Development and Forest Industries Minister yesterday, despite the party not yet knowing if she will secure the spot.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said the Constitution Act allows a person to serve as a minister for up to three months without being a member of parliament, saying “we wait to find out the result, although there is much hope within our circles”.
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