17
July 2018
PDF version [304KB]
Dr Nathan
Church
Politics and Public
Administration Section
Contents
List of
abbreviations
Introduction
Background
2014 election, party changes and
by-elections
SA redistribution and electoral
boundary changes
Changes to the Legislative Council
voting system
Retiring parliamentarians
Key campaign issues
Electricity supply and price
Health care
The Xenophon factor
Other minor parties
Election results
New and defeated parliamentarians
Factors in the result
The redistribution
Longstanding incumbent government
Lack of electoral success for Nick
Xenophon’s SA Best
List of
abbreviations
AC: Australian Conservatives Party
ALP: Australian Labor Party
DIG: Dignity Party/Dignity for Disability Party
ECSA: Electoral Commission of South Australia
EDBC: Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission
GRN: Australian Greens Party
GVT: Group Voting Ticket
Ind. Independent
LC: Legislative Council
Lib.: Liberal Party
MLC: Member of the Legislative Chamber
NXT: Nick Xenophon Team
SA: South Australia
Introduction
South Australia (SA) has a bicameral parliament consisting
of the House of Assembly (47 members) and the Legislative Council (22 members).
Since 2001, parliaments have sat for fixed terms, with elections held on the
third Saturday in March every four years for the entire House of Assembly and
half of the Legislative Council.[1]
Accordingly, the SA Governor prorogued parliament on 19 December 2017, with the
writs issued on 17 February 2018 for a 17 March general election.[2]
Background
2014
election, party changes and by-elections
Despite suffering a 1.7 per cent swing against it, the
Australian Labor Party (ALP) Government was returned in the 2014 election, securing
23 seats and the support of Independent MPs Geoff Brock and Martin
Hamilton-Smith, the latter having controversially left the Liberal Party to
take up a ministerial role with the Government (see Table 1).[3]
Within the Legislative Council, the ALP and Liberals each had four members
elected, with the remaining three positions being filled by Family First, the
Greens and the Independent Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) candidate John Darley (see
Table 2).
Table 1: House of Assembly
seats won by each party at the 2014 election
Party |
Seats (change from
2010 election) |
Female members |
Male Members |
ALP |
23 (-3) |
9 |
14 |
Lib. |
22 (+4) |
3 |
19 |
Ind. |
2 (-1) |
0 |
2 |
Total |
47 |
12 |
35 |
Table 2: Total Legislative
Council seats won by each party at the 2014 election
Party |
Seats (won in 2010) |
Total seats |
Female members |
Male Members |
ALP |
4 (3) |
7 |
1 |
6 |
Lib. |
4 (4) |
8 |
1 |
7 |
GRN |
1 (1) |
2 |
1 |
1 |
Family First |
1 (1) |
2 |
0 |
2 |
NXT |
1 (0) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
DIG |
0 (1) |
1 |
1 |
0 |
Ind. |
0 (1) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
Total |
11 (11) |
22 |
4 |
18 |
Two by-elections occurred following the 2014 general
election: on 6 December 2014 following the death of Dr Bob Such (Ind.–Fisher); and
in 2015 following the resignation of former Liberal Party leader Iain Evans
(Lib.–Davenport). ALP candidate Nat Cook was elected in Fisher by a margin of nine
votes to increase the Government’s narrow lower house majority; however, the
Opposition successfully held Davenport.
During 2017, both major parties had members resign to sit as
independents. The Deputy Speaker, Frances Bedford, resigned from the ALP in
March 2017 after losing the party’s preselection for Florey to Government minister
and sitting member for Playford, Jack Snelling.[4]
Snelling later retired from the parliament but Bedford resisted subsequent overtures
to return to the ALP.[5]
The Liberal Party lost sitting member Duncan McFetridge in May 2017, who became
an Independent after losing his preselection for the seat of Morphett.[6]
Shortly after this, Liberal member for Mount Gambier, Troy
Bell, was forced to resign from the party in August 2017 after being charged with
26 counts of misappropriating funds while working as an education facility
manager before entering parliament.[7]
Bell subsequently contested the 2018 election as an Independent.[8]
Additionally, John Darley resigned from the NXT in August 2017 and launched a
new ‘Advance SA’ party the following month.[9]
Of these four newly-Independent candidates, only Frances Bedford and Troy Bell
were re-elected in 2018.
SA
redistribution and electoral boundary changes
In SA a redistribution of district boundaries is required by
law after every election, with the SA Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission
(EDBC) determining the most recent redistribution in December 2016.[10]
A critical aspect of this report was the Commission’s interpretation and
implementation of the SA Constitution’s electoral fairness provision, introduced
in March 1991.[11]
The provision stated that:
In making an electoral redistribution the Commission must
ensure, as far as practicable, that the electoral redistribution is fair to
prospective candidates and groups of candidates so that, if candidates of a
particular group attract more than 50 per cent of the popular vote (determined
by aggregating votes cast throughout the State and allocating preferences to
the necessary extent), they will be elected in sufficient numbers to enable a
government to be formed.[12]
The EDBC’s 1991 report identified the inherent challenges in
facilitating this objective, stating that ‘a number of factors peculiar to
South Australia ... combine to isolate large surpluses of conservative rural
votes in “enclaves” where the votes cannot be “mixed” effectively with Labor
Party votes’.[13]
The EDBC offered a more pointed analysis 25 years later when its 2016 report
declared that ‘there is an innate imbalance, against the Liberal Party, caused
by voting patterns in South Australia upon which have been imposed successive
redistributions’.[14]
The ALP’s submission to the EDBC 2016 report contended that
the Liberal Party’s inability to successfully win marginal seats led to its
2014 defeat, as opposed to inherent bias in electoral distributions. The ALP
also raised concerns regarding malapportionment (of deep historical
significance in SA) whereby the 10 per cent permissible tolerance for a
district’s quota of electors could be unevenly maximised to weight more
conservative rural areas against more populated metropolitan centres.[15]
Conversely, the Liberal Party suggested in its submission that each major party
should be allocated an equal number of safe seats on Commission-prepared electoral
pendulums, and that its own marginal seats should be made safer. This could be achieved
by ‘unlocking’ Liberal votes from neighbouring safe seats through more fully
utilising the flexibility offered by the 10 per cent permissible tolerance of
the quota.[16]
Ultimately the EDBC instituted a far-reaching redistribution
of electoral boundaries, with approximately 400,000 electors impacted—over a
third of all SA voters enrolled at the time.[17]
This was the largest adjustment for at least the past 20 years. The political
impact was also significant, as the ALP-held electorates of Newland, Colton,
Elder and Mawson became notionally Liberal based on 2014 SA election results.[18]
Accordingly, the ALP Government went into the 2018 election with a winning two-party
preferred margin in only 20 of the 47 House of Assembly seats.
In one of the final acts of the previous parliament, Greens
MLC Mark Parnell introduced a Bill removing the fairness provision from the Constitution.
The Bill was supported by the ALP and crossbench MLCs from the Dignity Party
and Advance SA, but was opposed by the Liberal Party and Australian
Conservatives (AC) MLCs. In his second reading speech for the Bill, Mr Parnell stated
that:
The Greens’ position in relation to the so-called fairness
clause in section 83(1) and 83(3) has been that we have never supported them,
ever. These provisions ignore the crossbench. When I say ‘crossbench’, the
growing crossbench. These provisions completely ignore the 30 or more per cent
of South Australians who do not support either of the major parties.[19]
Parnell cited the creator of the fairness provision,
psephologist Malcolm Mackerras, who in a 2016 interview labelled the provision
a ‘failure’.[20]
Dignity Party MLC Kelly Vincent also noted that the clause ‘was designed at a
time at which the rise of minor parties and independent voices in parliament
could not be foreseen, so I think we do need to move forward with amending
that’.[21]
In opposing the Bill, the Shadow Treasurer Rob Lucas strongly
criticised it as ‘a dirty deal that has been done between the Greens and the
Labor Party to disadvantage the Liberal Party. We have been disadvantaged over
the last 12 years – three out of the last four elections’.[22]
The Bill was ultimately passed and assented to on 12 December 2017, removing
the fairness provision and requiring a review of all criteria for
redistributions to be tabled in Parliament by the end of March 2019.[23]
Changes to
the Legislative Council voting system
On 8 August 2017 the SA Parliament passed legislation which
removed group voting tickets (GVTs) for Legislative Council elections.[24]
Before this, political parties lodged a full list of their preferences (a GVT)
with the electoral commission, and these lists determined the preference flows
for ‘above the line’ votes cast for that party. Some political commentators regarded
GVTs as the catalyst for minor party preference harvesting and creating instances
of parliamentarians being elected with only tiny fractions of first preference
votes.[25]
However, a contrary view is that removing GVTs will mean ‘the bigger parties
slowly strangle the minor outfits’ and will result in significant amounts of
exhausted votes, with no ensuing impact on the final results.[26]
Group voting tickets were first used in SA Legislative
Council elections in 1985, having commenced in federal Senate elections the
year before. However, SA has followed other jurisdictions in reforming upper
house voting, as undertaken in NSW and the federal Senate (in their respective
2003 and 2016 elections).[27]
Greens MLC Mark Parnell had initially introduced legislation in October 2013,
which he claimed was ‘designed to end, once and for all, the dodgy backroom
preference deals that blight our election process and deliver perverse election
outcomes that clearly do not reflect the will of voters’.[28]
A similar Bill was introduced shortly after by then NXT MLC John Darley, but
both Bills failed to pass before parliament was prorogued.[29]
The Greens had similar legislation lapse in the following parliament.[30]
The Labor Government introduced its own legislation
proposing optional preferential voting in November 2016.[31]
This Bill allowed for optional ‘above the line’ preference voting for the Legislative
Council, where the first preference is marked ‘1’ and additional preferences
optional (similar to reforms enacted in NSW). The Liberal Opposition proposed
an alternative clause, recommending six above the line preferences as in the
federal Senate; however, this was subsequently rejected by the Legislative
Council.[32]
The Bill was assented to in September 2017, with the new voting method being used
in the March 2018 election.[33]
Retiring
parliamentarians
Twelve House of Assembly members—one quarter of the House—retired
prior to the 2018 election; six from the ALP, five from the Liberal Party and
one Independent. All of the retiring ALP parliamentarians had served as
Ministers, while Isobel Redmond (Lib.–Heysen) and Martin Hamilton-Smith (Ind.–Waite)
had both served as Leaders of the Opposition. The longest serving parliamentarian
to retire at the 2018 election was the ALP Member for Croydon, Michael
Atkinson, who first entered the parliament just over 28 years prior.
Two ALP Legislative Council members (Gail Gago and Gerry
Kandelaarsboth) also retired, while Peter Malinauskas (ALP) resigned his upper house
seat to contest the district of Croydon for the House of Assembly. Leesa Vlahos
(ALP–Taylor) had initially been preselected to replace Gail Gago for the top
position on the ALP’s 2018 Legislative Council ticket, but just over a year
later in February 2018 she announced her retirement.[34]
Ms Vlahos had previously resigned as Minister for Mental Health in September
2017, prior to an ICAC report revealing systemic failings of management and
oversight at the now-closed Oakden Older Persons Mental Health Service.[35]
Key campaign
issues
Electricity
supply and price
Electricity supply was a key election issue in 2018 given
the comparatively recent extreme weather event in September 2016 which caused
widespread disruptions.[36]
The cost of electricity was also of high importance to voters, with a late 2017
comparison of representative consumers finding South Australians reportedly paying
just under 30 per cent more per kilowatt hour than the national average.[37]
In addressing such supply and cost challenges, the Labor
Government released its energy plan in March 2017, at an initial estimated cost
of $550 million.[38]
By the time of the 2018 election, Labor’s suite of energy policies included:
- establishing a new state-owned gas-fired 250 megawatt power plant
to provide emergency electricity supply, in addition to a privately-developed
100 megawatt battery[39]
- expansion of solar power and battery storage, commencing with public
housing properties, and[40]
- setting a renewable energy target of 75 per cent by 2025.[41]
The Liberal Party
announced its energy policy in October 2017, incorporating a $200 million
interconnector fund to improve access to the National Electricity Market, and a
$100 million household battery program.[42]
Having initially declared that his party’s policies would reduce average
household power bills by over $300 per year, Opposition leader Steven Marshall subsequently
amended this proposed saving to between $60 and $70.[43]
Health care
Health care proved to be another key election issue,
especially given the demands of SA’s comparatively older population and its
economic dependency on the health care sector.[44]
During the election campaign both major parties pledged to upgrade facilities
at metropolitan and regional hospitals, as well as increase funding for mental
health services.[45]
However, a major point of difference was the contentious issue of the Daw Park
Repatriation hospital site. In June 2017 the Labor Government had agreed to
sell the site to the aged care and health service provider ACH Group, with
services to be officially closed later that year in November.[46]
Having consistently opposed this decision while in Opposition, the Liberal
Party committed to re-opening the hospital to facilitate elective surgeries,
community health hydrotherapy and mental health services if elected to
Government.[47]
The
Xenophon factor
On 6 October 2017 Senator Nick Xenophon announced his
intention to resign from the federal Senate and stand for the district of
Hartley in the upcoming SA election, citing SA’s energy supply and high
electricity costs as particularly motivating issues.[48]
Twenty years prior, Xenophon had first gained a seat in the SA Legislative
Council as an Independent ‘No Pokies’ candidate, having received just 2.9 per
cent of the first preference votes. Xenophon formally resigned his federal Senate
seat on 31 October 2017.[49]
Having previously fielded SA Legislative Council candidates
as ‘Nick Xenophon’s No Pokies’ in 2006 and ‘Independent – Nick Xenophon Team’ (NXT)
in 2014, the party name ‘Nick Xenophon’s SA Best’ was officially registered
with the SA Electoral Commission (ECSA) on 4 July 2017.[50]
At the 2016 federal election NXT fielded candidates in all
11 House of Representatives divisions, achieving 21.3 per cent of the SA state-wide
first preference vote and winning the seat of Mayo. However, 2018 represented
the first time a Xenophon-led party would contest lower house seats in an SA
state election. SA Best ultimately fielded 36 candidates for the House of
Assembly (across 47 total districts) and five candidates for the Legislative
Council.
Immediately after Nick Xenophon’s announcement regarding
contesting the SA election, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall ruled out the
potential for any Liberal government being formed reliant on SA Best support.[51]
The Labor Party made no similar statements.
Other minor
parties
The Australian Conservatives (AC) party fielded 32
candidates for the House of Assembly and two for the Legislative Council. SA federal
Senator Cory Bernardi formed the party after resigning from the Liberal Party
in February 2017.[52]
The AC subsequently merged with the Family First party in April 2017, which
already held two seats in the SA Legislative Council.[53]
The Australian Greens (SA) fielded candidates in all 47 House of Assembly districts
and five candidates for the Legislative Council.
As at 2 July 2018, fourteen political parties were registered
with the ECSA, 12 of which contested the 2018 election.[54] Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party was
ineligible to stand, having failed to register with the ECSA before the six
month cut-off prior to the election date.[55]
Other parties not contesting the election were the Nationals (which reportedly cited
the rival presence of SA Best in justifying their absence) and the Shooters and
Fishers Party, which was de-registered by ECSA in February 2018.[56]
Election
results
The election resulted in a new Liberal Government in SA—the
first in 16 years. Steven Marshall was formally sworn in as Premier on 19
March, with Vickie Chapman appointed as SA’s first female Deputy Premier and
Rob Lucas becoming Treasurer for the second time.[57]
The new 14-member Ministry essentially comprises the former Liberal Opposition
frontbench, containing 11 men and three women. The Liberal Member for Hartley,
Vincent Tarzia, was appointed as Speaker for the House of Assembly, and is the
youngest member to ever hold this position.
Following Labor’s defeat, Jay Weatherill stepped down as
party leader and was replaced by Peter Malinauskas, who at 37 years of age
became the youngest SA ALP leader since John Bannon in 1979. The ALP’s deputy
leadership also changed, from John Rau (ALP–Enfield) to Susan Close
(ALP–Port Adelaide). Labor announced its 14-member shadow ministry on 11 April,
comprising eight men and six women. Alongside former Premier Jay Weatherill,
former Ministers John Rau, Leon Bignell and Ian Hunter have shifted to the
backbench.[58]
Table 3: Seats won in the
SA House of Assembly by party and gender, 2018 SA election
Party |
Number of seats won |
Female members |
Male Members |
Lib. |
25 |
4 (16%) |
21 (84%) |
ALP |
19 |
6 (32 %) |
13 (68%) |
Ind. |
3 |
1 (33%) |
2 (67%) |
Table 4: Seats won in the SA
Legislative Council by party and gender, 2018 SA election
Party |
Number of seats won |
Female members |
Male Members |
Lib. |
4 |
1 (25%) |
3 (75%) |
ALP |
4 |
3 (75%) |
1 (25%) |
Nick Xenophon’s SA Best |
2 |
1 (50%) |
1 (50%) |
GRN |
1 |
1 (100%) |
0 (0%) |
*MLCs not
up for re-election in 2018: 4 Liberal, 4 ALP, 1 Greens, 1 Australian Conservatives
and 1 Advance SA.
Table 5: Composition of the SA Legislative Council by
party and gender following the 2018 SA election
Party |
Number of seats |
Female members |
Male members |
Lib. |
9* |
2 (22%) |
7 (78%) |
ALP |
8 |
3 (37.5%) |
5 (62.5%) |
Nick Xenophon’s SA Best |
2 |
1 (50%) |
1 (50%) |
GRN. |
2 |
1 (50%) |
1 (50%) |
Advance SA |
1 |
0 (0%) |
1 (100%) |
*Dennis Hood MLC changed his
affiliation from Australian Conservatives to the Liberal Party on 26 March
2018.[59]
In keeping with current voting trends in Australia, more
than a quarter of all ballots cast in the 2018 SA election (almost 300,000) were
submitted prior to polling day. Pre-poll ballots accounted for 75 per cent of
these, with the remainder being postal ballots.[60]
This was significantly higher than the approximate 150,000 declaration ballots
cast at the 2014 SA election.[61]
For the 2018 election, the Fleurieu Peninsula district of Finniss was
particularly noteworthy, with almost half its returns made as declaration
ballots.[62]
Previously, in November 2016, the then-Labor Government
proposed legislation incorporating a clause to reduce the pre-poll voting period
to the five days prior to polling day.[63]
However, this clause was voted down by all non-Labor members of the Legislative
Council, and so the existing two week pre-poll period remains.[64]
New and
defeated parliamentarians
Twenty parliamentarians—almost 30 per cent of the SA
Parliament—were elected for the first time at the 2018 election: 15 in the
House of Assembly and five in the Legislative Council. Two had previously
contested the 2014 SA election: Carolyn Habib (Lib.–Elder) and Sam Duluk (Lib.–Waite).
Former Premier Jay Weatherill’s chief of staff (Michael Brown; ALP–Playford),
deputy chief of staff (Blair Boyer; ALP–Wright) and community engagement
officer (Emily Bourke; ALP-Legislative Council) all gained seats in parliament,
as well as two former athletes—paralympian Matt Cowdrey (Lib–Colton) and AFL
footballer Stephen Patterson (Lib.–Morphett).
Only three incumbent House of Assembly members were defeated
in the 2018 election: Government Whip Tom Kenyon (ALP–Newland), Annabel
Dignance (ALP–Elder) and Duncan McFetridge (Ind.–Morphett). In the Legislative
Council, two sitting members were not returned: Robert Brokenshire (AC–LC) and
Kelly Vincent (DIG–LC).
Factors in
the result
The redistribution
In his
post-election review, ABC election analyst Antony Green stated that ‘the final
results confirm that the redistribution was largely responsible for the
election outcome’.[65]
Green characterised the campaign as ‘a bit like a First World War battlefield.
The Boundaries Commission drew the electoral dividing line, and the combatants
metaphorically dug trenches either side by making all their own seats safer’.[66]
Within this context, the uniform three per cent swing the ALP needed to retain
government ultimately proved too great a challenge. The ALP did, however, achieve
a small two-party preferred swing towards it of 1.1 per cent, compared to the
victorious Liberal Party (which had a 1.1 per cent swing against it).[67]
The weight of the EDBC’s significant 2016 redistribution had
clear effects. Almost half of the state’s 47 House of Assembly districts were
more than 3.5 per cent over/under quota on election day, based on the 2018
election quota of 25,570 (1,201,775 enrolled voters divided by the 47
districts). At the extreme ends of the spectrum, the Adelaide northern suburbs
district of Elizabeth (won by the ALP) was 11.1 per cent over the quota, while
the rural district of Flinders (won by the Liberal Party) was 11 per cent under
the quota.
The redistribution of beachside districts along the Gulf of
St Vincent was arguably more significant than a straightforward
metropolitan/regional divide, however. Due to the shifting boundaries, the
Liberal Party went from holding two seats in 2014 (Morphett and Bright) between
Henley Beach and Hallett Cove, to four seats after the 2018 election (Colton,
Morphett, Gibson and Black).
Longstanding
incumbent government
Even without the effects of the redistribution, the ALP
faced the challenge of convincing voters to elect it for another term after just
over 16 years in government. This long period in office eclipsed even the
tenure of the former NSW ALP government, which ran from 1995 to 2011. During its
time in office the ALP in SA had won the two-party preferred (2PP) vote only
once, in 2006, with the 2014 election 2PP being 53-47 per cent in favour of the
Liberal Party.
The accumulation of issues over time (for example car
manufacturer General Motors ceasing operations in northern Adelaide; the
extreme weather in September 2016 that led to large-scale electricity
black-outs; the TAFE SA course accreditation and Oakden scandals) also arguably
had an effect.[68]
Lack of electoral success for Nick Xenophon’s SA
Best
Polling undertaken shortly after Nick Xenophon’s
announcement to contest the 2018 SA election revealed strong popular support, with
41 per cent of respondents identifying Xenophon as their preferred premier and voting
intentions indicating 30 per cent of the primary vote for SA Best.[69]
These results were largely replicated by a Newspoll survey published two months
later in December 2017.[70]
However, two weeks out from the election, polling suggested that around
one-third of SA Best’s intended primary vote had disappeared (down to 21 per
cent), and less than 30 per cent of respondents thought Xenophon the best
option for Premier.[71]
The election results themselves were even worse, with SA
Best receiving just 14.1 per cent of the first preference vote and gaining no
seats in the House of Assembly and just two seats in the Legislative Council. In
addition, of the 36 seats it contested SA Best polled second place in only 12 after
preferences. This predominantly involved outpolling the ALP in SA’s rural
districts, such as Mackillop where SA Best’s vote almost doubled that of the
ALP.
During the campaign SA Best faced significant policy
scrutiny, particularly regarding gambling reform. SA Best’s policy of a 30 per
cent reduction in poker machines over five years attracted criticism,
particularly from the Hotels Association which feared reductions would create
industry job losses, and also from the Greens who had called for a total ban in
five years.[72]
SA Best also suffered from not having a clear preference
ally. This was in stark contrast to the Liberals, which consistently received most
of the Australian Conservatives preferences, and to the ALP, which regularly
garnered most of the Greens preferences. Based on the published
how-to-vote cards, the ALP preferenced the Liberal Party ahead of SA Best in 18
seats, and the Greens preferenced both major parties ahead of SA Best in 14
seats. SA Best received only nine second-preference selections on major party
how-to-vote cards: five from the ALP (in outer-metro and rural districts) and
four from the Liberal Party (in north and eastern metro areas).[73]
However, even if more favourable preference deals had been made, SA Best failed
to win sufficient primary votes. In the 36 seats it contested, SA Best’s
average primary vote was 18.5 per cent, ranging from a high of 25.9 per cent in
the north-western rural district of Giles to a low of 10.5 per cent in the Adelaide
western-suburbs district of Croydon.
Following the 2018 election, one academic expert contended
that SA Best eventually failed due to insufficient financial resourcing, too
many candidates, unfocused campaign tactics and policy formulation, and
Xenophon’s inability to transition to a more credible political statesman.[74]
In addition:
had Xenophon run for the Legislative Council, together with a
disciplined and targeted lower house campaign focussed on a handful of seats,
it is quite possible that SA Best might have picked up three seats in the upper
house and maybe two or three seats in the lower house. If that were the case
Xenophon would indeed have been the kingmaker in the new parliament, as was his
original objective. Instead, he deliberately chose a high-risk approach that
has brought his political career, and his party, crashing down.[75]
While SA Best secured two upper house members in the 2018
election, the Australian Conservatives now have no representatives in the SA
parliament: Robert Brokenshire missed out on re-election, and Dennis Hood
defected to the Liberal Party, leaving federal Senator Cory Bernardi as the party’s
only parliamentarian across all Australian jurisdictions.
[1]. Constitution
Act 1934 (SA).
[2]. Constitution
(Prorogation of Parliament) Proclamation 2017 (SA); Electoral
Commission SA (ECSA), 2018
State Election timetable, website, accessed 10 May 2018.
[3]. ABC News, ‘Martin
Hamilton-Smith quits Liberals to back South Australian Labor Government’,
website, 28 May 2014, accessed 17 May 2018.
[4]. ABC News, ‘Frances
Bedford points finger at Labor’s “faceless men” as she quits party’,
website, 28 March 2017, accessed 10 May 2018.
[5]. ABC News, ‘SA
Health Minister Jack Snelling resigns from Cabinet and will not contest March
election’, website, 17 September 2017, accessed 10 May 2018; T
Fedorowytsch, ‘Frances
Bedford to contest 2018 South Australian election as an independent’,
website, 1 December 2017, accessed 10 May 2018.
[6]. ABC News, ‘SA
MP Duncan McFetridge vows to stand as independent after losing Liberal
preselection’, website, 19 June 2017, accessed 10 May 2018.
[7]. N Hunt, ‘Lib
MP theft charges’, The Advertiser, 18 August 2017, p 1, accessed 18
May 2018.
[8]. A Dowdell, ‘Embattled
MP: Don’t write me off just yet’, The Advertiser, 16 December 2017,
p. 11, accessed 18 May 2018.
[9]. M Owen, ‘Call
for deserting MP to resign from state parliament’, Weekend Australian,
19 August 2017, p. 8, accessed 10 May 2018; N Harmsen, ‘The
ex-X men: spurned Nick Xenophon affiliates launch rival party Advance SA ahead
of election’, ABC News online, 15 September 2017, accessed 19 March 2018.
[10]. SA Electoral
Districts Boundaries Commission (EDBC), 2016
report of the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, 7 December
2017, accessed 20 March 2018. For a historical overview of redistributions in
SA see ECSA, South
Australian electoral boundary redistributions 1851–2016, June 2017,
accessed 21 May 2018.
[11]. Constitution
(Electoral Redistribution) Amendment Act, 1991 (SA).
[12]. Constitution
Act, subsection 83(1).
[13]. EDBC, 1991
report of the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, p. 12.
[14]. EDBC, 2016
report of the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, op. cit., p. 30.
[15]. ALP (SA
Branch), Submission
to the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, paras.45, 98–113, EDBC
website, accessed 26 March 2018.
[16]. Liberal Party
of Australia (SA Division), Submission
to the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, paras. 48–50, 58, EDBC
website, accessed 26 March 2018.
[17]. SA EDBC, 2016
report, p. 42.
[18]. N Harmsen, ‘Liberal
Party given a boost ahead of 2018 SA election in boundary redistribution’, ABC
News online, 8 December 2016.
[19]. M Parnell,
‘Second reading speech’, Constitution (One Vote One Value) Amendment Bill,
South Australia, Legislative Council, Debates,
30 November 2017, p. 8830.
[20]. T Richardson, ‘SA’s
electoral fairness clause a “failure”, says the man who drafted it’, InDaily,
21 March 2016, accessed 21 March 2018.
[21]. K Vincent,
‘Second reading speech’, Constitution (One Vote One Value) Amendment Bill,
South Australia, Legislative Council, Debates,
30 November 2017, p. 8837.
[22]. R Lucas,
‘Second reading speech’, Constitution (One Vote One Value) Amendment Bill,
South Australia, Legislative Council, Debates,
30 November 2017, p. 8833.
[23]. Constitution
(One Vote One Value) Amendment Act 2017 (SA).
[24]. I Hunter,
‘Final stages speech’, Electoral (Legislative Council voting and other
measures) Amendment Bill, South Australia, Legislative Council, Debates,
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