“The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart”
– Rudyard Kipling
In the aftermath of the election, it looks likely that Labor will govern with an absolute majority of at least 7 seats in the House of Assembly and will gain an extra seat in the 22-seat Legislative Council, taking its tally to 9, the Liberals 8, Greens 2, SA Best (who were not up for re-election) 2, and One Nation 1. The government should have little trouble getting its agenda through the parliament with that composition.
On that, it must be said that One Nation, led in South Australia by the mercurial Jennifer Game, will be a great asset to the SA Parliament. Although Jennifer herself will not be the Upper House member as she is to be the No 1 candidate on her party’s Senate ticket at the forthcoming Federal election, Jennifer’s daughter Sarah Game, a practicing veterinarian and mother of three will represent the party. If the SA election is anything to go by – and why wouldn’t it be – Senator Game is a distinct possibility.
As for the Australian Family Party, we are on track to pick up around 12,000 votes or 1% of the State total. To quote Winston Churchill, “This is not the end (of the party). It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Since the formation of the Party from scratch less than 18 months ago, we now have a credible voting base, a solid membership list, a strong policy platform, a database of Newsletter recipients that runs into the thousands and a general election which ran like clockwork.
Much credit for this goes to our small but dedicated squad of candidates – Lionel Zschech, Nicole Hussey, Peter Ieraci, Robert Walker, Dan Casey, Sue Jarman and the brilliant Alex Banks and his campaign team. Also, Campbell Woskett, Joe Tripodi, Tony Schirripa, Matt Barnes, Jason Keiller and Chris Goodway provided the party with incredible support during these past few months. Thank you all.
Thanks also to all our volunteers who stood on polling booths on Saturday – and at some pre-polling stations – for hours on end in the hot sun, handing out how-to-vote cards for our candidates. Thank you so much. The difference in the number of votes between booths where there are how-to-vote volunteers and where there is no-one is stark.
To our members and supporters who uphold us in so many ways: Thank you.
And finally, to the 12,000 people who voted for us. Thank you for your vote of confidence, it gives us a tremendous foundation on which to build for the future.
We went into this election with a two-pronged strategy. First, to join forces with like-minded parties to unseat those Members who voted for abortion-to-birth and, second, to win a seat in the State’s Upper House.
The Members we targeted lost their seats by bigger margins than the like-minded parties garnered, so our preferences made little difference and we did not win an Upper House seat. Not this time, anyway.
What the election did reveal however was how the Liberal Party’s one-term Premier Steven Marshall and his socially moderate wet faction leader and Deputy-Premier Vickie Chapman, in one fell swoop somehow managed to alienate all of the state’s conservatives – who, by the way, helped them win office in 2018 – with their decision to introduce a raft of radical social changes including abortion-to-birth and ‘assisted dying’ (euthanasia) legislation and a clumsy attempt to block a conservative recruitment drive by SA Liberal senator Alex Antic. To borrow from the ’70s Canadian rock outfit the Five Man Electrical Band, “And the sign said … ‘CONSERVATIVES NOT WELCOME, … HERE!’ The only response to that would surely be, “Why would you do that in your first term?”
The Liberals’ radical legislation marshalled (no pun intended) some Christian and other socially conservative groups and political parties into campaigning against a number of sitting Liberal MPs who just happened to be occupying marginal seats. And whilst, as discussed, the pro-life message had minimal impact on the ballot box, it did show that for the Liberals to have any chance of victory against the State’s natural party of government it needs the support of the State’s conservatives. Steven Marshall had their support in 2018 but threw it away in 2022.
We will not know the final numbers for the Legislative Council for another few weeks, however when all the numbers are finally in, I will provide another update.
In the meantime, we all need a rest …