Nine Network’s Ray Martin agreed to moderate the ‘leaders’ debate’ but, for his trouble, was reported by the Advertiser for scoring a mere 50 per cent in its quiz on state politics. Of course, many South Australians may not have managed any better, but the exercise did highlight the fact that the premier feared facing a moderator, or panel of journalists, with local knowledge. In fact Mike Rann went further, insisting that the debate be broadcast on Friday night, rather than the customary Sunday when its likely the audience would have been larger. This is surprising given his dominant lead over the opposition leader, Rob Kerin, and underscores the absurd degree to which nothing is put to risk in modern campaigning. Apparently Channel 7 easily out-rated 9 and, sadly, that is probably exactly what both leaders wanted.

We can report the consensus opinion gave Rann a ‘win’. Both the Australian and the Advertiser reported that Kerin failed to lift what is now a decidedly weak Liberal campaign. Once again Rann taunted Kerin on the matter of privatisation of power and floated the notion that a Kerin-led government would introduce toll roads. Timidly, Kerin replied that public private partnerships would not give rise to tolls, but his main point - that Labor’s plan for a series of tunnels under the north-south arterial lacked vision - was lost against Rann’s privatisation smear. It remains a mystery why the state Liberals fail to hammer home the point that the government’s celebration of winning Standard and Poor’s Triple A blessing came as a consequence of their policy boldness, namely the privatisation of power generation. And that fact could have led them to make the bold argument that if Adelaide wants twenty-first century highways then tolls are inevitable if government is to manage spending on health, schools, infrastructure and environmental protection. That would be novel, but there is little chance the chastened Kerin led Liberals would risk such policy differentiation.

Labor’s campaign

A series of policies on environmental issues, none of them particularly grand, will reassure those Labor voters who find little to differentiate their party from the Liberals. A pledge to plant 2.5 million trees to combat salinity along the Murray, subsidise rain water tanks connected to the family home and fund climate change research presented point of difference with the Liberals. The state’s plumbers, electricians and tank suppliers have much to gain here, as does the environment, but the opposition environment spokesman, and likely next Liberal leader, Iain Evans, makes the reasonable point that he doubted that many households could afford the estimated $1500 required rainwater tank hook-up.

No election campaign would be complete without accusations of budgetary ‘black holes’, and here the Australian claimed that Labor must find $300 million in savings to meet new spending commitments including the health minister John Hill’s proposed $12m for improved public dental care. The newspaper accompanied their analysis of both party’s ‘Promises to Date’ with a detailed table showing Labor’s biggest promises are:

• $140m - the South Rd underpass
• $112m over four years - 400 extra police officers and three new ‘police shopfronts’
• $41m - three special health centres
• $28m - 100 extra teachers.

Treasurer Kevin Foley rejected the option of putting the budget into deficit and, while conceding that public service cuts would be required, refused to detail where they would be made. By saying that there was ‘plenty of scope in government to find savings’, he partly contradicted the Public Service Association’s anti-Liberal television advertisements.

The Liberal campaign

Combined with Labor’s television campaign, the Public Service Association’s $250,000 television campaign attacking the Liberal proposal to cut 4000 taxpayer funded jobs highlights the difficulties Kerin confronts. It is expected that a few Liberal television advertisements will appear during the last week of the campaign, but with an Advertiser poll suggesting the comfortably held Liberal seat of Unley is in danger of falling to Labor the advertisements will need to be highly effective.

The Liberal campaign will have its official launch on Sunday (as will Labor’s) and it must crystallise the main message if electoral disaster is to be avoided. The Advertiser’s statewide poll reports the Liberals making some headway in first preference voting intentions, up one percentage point to 33 per cent, but at this level a defeat akin to Labor’s 1993 shocker remains a possibility.

The most notable feature of the past week’s campaigning concerns the Liberals’ tough stance on marijuana, which made headline news last Friday, and their continued push to improve the state’s roads. Kerin proposes to put an end to the regime of minor fines that punishes cannabis usage with a slap on the wrist (possession of less than 25 grams attracts a $50 expiation fee). He argues that since the Bannon government decriminalised cannabis use in the late 1980s it is not uncommon to hear Adelaide described as the nation’s ‘cannabis capital’. The link between cannabis abuse and a growing problem with mental illness, especially among teenagers, is well known. In this instance the Liberals appear to have trumped Labor’s more equivocal stance, a rare feat given Rann’s championing of law and order. Current penalties, argue the Liberals, are manifestly inadequate now that the more addictive hydroponically grown cannabis is so widespread. Ironically, the proposal spurned the rebirth of the pro-cannabis party, which managed to attract about 11,000 upper house voters in 1993; still, we doubt that will be bettered in 2006.

Among the Liberals key policy initiatives are:

• a cut of 4000 public service jobs
• $340m road maintenance program including construction of double lane highway (as distinct from the more expensive ‘freeway’ option - estimated cost $130m)
• hire extra 400 police in first term - estimated cost $400m
• specialists to help students with learning difficulties $32m.

Predictions

In relation to the main game, the contest for government, the only question is: Rann Labor, but by how far? Given the fact that Kerin has struggled and Rann has not really put a foot wrong, it appears a very solid win is on the cards (but more predictions next week).

The wash-up from the backroom wheeling and dealing over preferences produced a genuine surprise with Family First deciding to split preferences between Liberal and Labor in a number of key Liberal marginals. Family First demonstrated considerable savvy and realism. They understood that it would be foolish to put offside, unnecessarily, a conservative Labor government set for victory; in the process, they signalled to the Liberal Party that their preferences cannot be taken for granted. Interestingly, it appears that Family First found the factional heavyweights from the Labor right, who hold strong religious convictions, easy to deal with. It’s interesting to ponder the ramifications for Labor in the lead up to the next federal election.

Tight seats

Finally, a quick look at how some of the more interesting seats may pan out.

LIBERAL MARGINAL (seats held by less than 6 per cent)
(Following Antony Green’s calculations of margins)

Hartley (2.1 per cent) Labor Win
The expected swing to the government (5 to 8 per cent) should carry Labor ministerial staffer, Grace Portolesi, to victory notwithstanding Family First directing preferences to sitting member, Joe Scalzi. Opinion polls point to the Greens doing better than expected, at around 5 per cent, and this should neutralise Family First’s impact should it manage 7 per cent.

Stuart (2.3 per cent) Liberal Retain Labor’s Justin Jarvis nearly recorded a surprise win in 2002 and some pundits are touting this as Labor win. A geographically huge rural seat, Stuart has been held by Graham Gunn for 36 years (he is the nation’s longest serving parliamentarian) and Gunn’s networks have surely been put to work to ensure his survival, but it will still be a close count.

Light (2.6 per cent) Labor Win
One of the Liberal marginal seats expected to be among the first to go, especially now that Family First are splitting their preferences.

Morialta (3.6 per cent) Labor Win
Thirteen years in parliament looks like coming to an end for Liberal incumbent, Joan Hall. The swing to Labor should be sufficient and again Family First’s decision to split their preferences does the Liberals no favours. Bright (5 per cent) Labor Win
In the absence of an incumbent, Labor’s Chloe Fox, a secondary school teacher, looks like a good bet. She began campaigning nearly a year ago and for someone not yet in parliament she enjoys a high profile. Liberal member of the upper house, Angus Redford, hopes to pull off a traditionally difficult political act, namely a switch from the upper to the lower house. Family First preferences are in play here and should keep Redford in the race but it won’t be enough, especially with Fox claiming the lion’s share of Green preferences.

Newland (5.5 per cent) Labor Win
The retirement of Liberal member, Dorothy Kotz, means the 5.5 per cent margin is probably now much less and this suggests that Labor staffer Tom Kenyon is well placed to take advantage of the Rann factor. The Liberal candidate, Mark Osterstock, has the advantage of being active in local government but without the full flow of Family First preferences it is now difficult to see the Liberals retain the seat. Should Kenyon fail this may be a salutatory lesson for the Labor ‘machine’ that they should think carefully before preselecting party apparatchiks who have no connection with the electorate they seek to represent - not even an address within its boundaries.

Unley (special case! - 9 per cent) Labor Win
This should be a safe Liberal retain, but with the departure of sitting member Mark Brindal the benefits of incumbency are lost (although in this instance that’s perhaps doubtful given the controversy surrounding Brindal). A recent Advertiser poll points toward a win by Labor’s Michael Keenan, the current Mayor of Unley, and we have no reason to quibble given the uncanny accuracy of the Advertiser’s phone polls.

Finnis (15 per cent) Close - will the ‘independent National’ unseat the sitting Liberal?
Dean Brown’s departure will hurt the Liberal vote, and while their candidate Michael Pengilly is likely to benefit from his high profile as Mayor of Kangaroo Island he faces a stiff challenge from Alexandrina mayor, Kym McHugh, who is running as an ‘independent National’ (the SA Nationals prefer not only to be prefixed as independent but insist it’s with a small ‘i’). Having secured Labor and Family First preferences, McHugh is likely to push the count to preferences and this could produce the shock of election 2006.

Hammond (Lewis, 2.2 per cent) Liberal Win
The Liberals are set to regain Hammond, the Murray Mallee seat occupied by Peter Lewis. Lewis saw the writing on the wall and nominated for the Upper House, where his decision to preference independent No Pokies MP, Nick Xenophon, will play a part in assisting Xenophon to retain his seat.

LABOR MARGINALS

Labor is likely to retain comfortably all its marginal seats with the most interest being Norwood (0.5 per cent) where the Liberals are pitting retired Crows footballer, Nigel Smart, against the Labor’s great survivor, Vinni Ciccarello.

The upper house and the rise of Family First

While Labor is set for a celebratory election night this may be tempered by how matters unfold in the Legislative Council count. To win a Legislative Council majority Labor requires seven seats out of the eleven contested in the 22 member house. This is ‘impossible’ given that Labor has never managed more than five. Thus, should Family First win an additional seat at the expense of what has traditionally been a Democrat victory, it follows that Labor will front an upper house evenly balanced between right and left. Assuming the Liberals win four seats (and that could prove difficult) the balance will be, in all probability, nine Liberal and two Family First versus nine Labor, a Democrat and ‘No Pokies’ Nick Xenophon.

But Xenophon could fall short as a result of the Green’s preference swap with the Democrats. The Democrats will struggle to stay in the count, and when their preferences flow out to the Greens, Xenophon could be out of the race. Given the paucity of favours Xenophon receives from others parties and independents it follows that he needs at least 5 or 6 per cent primary support - but he managed only 2 per cent in 1997. But if you were to ask South Australians to name five MPs in the State parliament, Xenophon would feature in most responses; this, we believe, will see the parliament’s prankster re-elected.

If we are correct it follows that the Greens will be hoping Labor fails to elect a fifth member. In our view the Greens primary vote will be its weakness, as voters otherwise keen to support the Greens recall the divisions within the party’s state branch and shy away from offering support. (In this respect we are at odds with ABC election analyst, Antony Green, who possibly exaggerates both the Green vote and their booth worker presence.) These divisions are grave for any minor party as they are likely to have an adverse impact on the recruitment of polling booth workers. Much paper may be wasted on three quarters of voters but the ‘how to vote card’ represents a vital ingredient for effective harvesting of the disaffected, younger and simply uncertain voters. Here Family First - unlike Nick Xenophon in particular - has a huge large advantage, with hundreds of willing ‘Christian soldiers’ happy to help on polling day.