Will SA Libs see a band of breakaway MPs step to the left?
Mike Smithson mulls over a hardline Liberal conservative airing rumours of a breakaway group forming in SA — and war in the Middle East threatening costs to the new Women’s and Children’s hospital.
The brutal mutilation of the Liberal’s parliamentary ranks only fully dawned on me last week on the North Terrace footpath outside State Parliament.
I was involved in promotional filming unrelated to political events of the day, when Liberal Opposition Leader Ashton Hurn and her newly minted shadow cabinet emerged from the hallowed halls to walk across the Torrens footbridge for a team unveiling.
‘So, this is it?’ I thought to myself.
Eleven people representing the Liberal’s state joint party room from both chambers of parliament following the March state election. It did not present an imposing image.
In final voting results, five Libs have been elected to the 47 seat Lower House, with two MLC candidates being re-elected to the Upper House joining the four existing members who were not up for re-election.
It will be an enormous task for any, or all, of the Liberal team to hold the government to account with this meagre offering over the next four years.
Almost 30 separate and important sectors of government all with departments, staff, budgets and constant problem areas, are now shared between 11 shadow ministers.
Health, on its own, virtually takes metropolitan seat winner Jack Batty out of the bigger picture of shadow portfolios.
It is always a battle to engage with key bureaucrats when you are straining to be heard from opposition, but especially when the workload is far greater than ever experienced before.
Throw in the other thorny issue that three of the five lower house members, including Hurn, are from regional areas where they have large geographical electorates to service as the newly re-elected members.
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It seems unfair that the tyranny of distance adds to enormous workloads but it is fair to describe the task easier managed if they lived in the metropolitan area.
So, for most it’s a greater challenge ahead than after the party’s sizeable 2022 election loss with four more years of hard slog which, even then, is unlikely to win them government in 2030.
It may be a delicate analogy in current times of global conflict, but everyone agrees there needs to be a major Liberal shake up.
The question remains whether it is simple ballistics or going thermo-nuclear.
State conservative power broker and federal Senator Alex Antic seems willing to grab the nuclear codes and push the big red button.
He says Liberals and their volunteers can only go out and fight a war with the ammunition they are given and he is demanding both the state and federal parties start acting like Liberals with “freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of association.”
“People expecting that this nonsense of leaning to the left (moderate faction) will capture seats that we don’t have has been proven wrong more times than I’ve had hot dinners,” he says.
He claims Liberals have been too reliant on a casual “working for the weekend” approach at both state and federal levels which does not cut it in today’s brutal 24/7 political game.
“It is now time, and I’ve spent the last five years under great criticism from many corners to re-stump the party,” Antic said.
When questioned why people did not appear to be listening to him, Antic’s answer was simple.
“They’re not listening to me and they should,” he said.
“I’ve been talking about the solution here and that is to really return to the Menzies-style of the Liberal Party.”
But Antic will not concede that he is trying to lead the party into hardline, far-right conservative rigidity, but more along a path of returning to their roots.
“A lot of people will be looking at One Nation polling at 20 per cent (SA election night figures, but now 22.9 per cent) and I don’t accept the term ‘hard right’ as that’s just bandied around by the media.
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“What does that mean?
“Are we just talking common sense politics?
“Obviously there are large numbers of South Australians who could be characterised as ‘hard right’ and I don’t accept that.”
Antic says he hears rumours of the moderate faction wanting to form its own breakaway movement which he says, if true, could well happen.
So, his forceful election night rhetoric was fighting words from which he was hardly likely to relent.
But what does that mean for the “broad church” approach regularly expressed by one of the most respected Liberal visionaries, John Howard?
What the moderates want and what the conservatives are demanding seem poles apart, which doesn’t bode well for the shellshocked party at federal or state levels.
Squabbles and differences in the blue camp are music to the ears of Labor’s increased team.
As the dust settles, Labor emerges from election day with 34 lower house members with its members focussed more on One Nation’s menacing four MPs, than the Liberals or other independents combined.
The “Mali shine” should be buffed further this week with SA hosting another AFL Gather Round with an influx of interstate visitors enjoying the footy and mildly acceptable, lower petrol prices.
But depending on what happens in the Middle East, the Premier’s time in the sun may quickly fade if the war continues, inflation and interest rates skyrocket and the nation descends into economic recession.
Against that backdrop, I have concerns about the immediate progress of major, flagship projects such as the South Road tunnels or the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
These can not be stop-start mega projects at the whim of fluctuating state finances and fortunes.
But in tough times, destined to get much tougher, how will the state cope with its spiralling debt, which is now rapidly approaching $50 billion, if revenue starts to fall?
This must be a new generation problem keeping Peter Malinauskas awake at night.
As I drive past the new WCH site almost daily on my way to work, the vastness of its blank canvas amplifies the enormity of the construction job ahead.
As with the tunnels, each day may present a new escalation of rising construction costs.
In these tricky economic times, we need everything to go right and nothing to go wrong.
Those in high places agree, especially with the daunting hospital project.
The Libs may be thinking opposition isn’t such a bad place to be after all.
Mike Smithson is weekend newsreader and presenter for 7NEWS.
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