By Abe Maddison in Adelaide
South Australia has woken to a returned Labor government but it will be days before it is clear how many lower house seats One Nation has won despite a huge swing in its favour.
Premier Peter Malinauskas vowed his party would “work our guts out for the next four years” after increasing its majority.
“Although this is the best result our party has ever achieved, it’s very important that no one confuses tonight’s result as adulation,” he said.
Labor had secured 30 seats, the Liberals four seats but the remaining 13 seats in the lower house were in doubt.
In a historic result, One Nation had a 19.2 per cent swing, while the Liberals vote collapsed with a 15.9 per cent swing against it, with nearly 40 per cent of the vote counted.
One Nation candidates were leading the primary vote in the lower house seats of Hammond, Mackillop and Ngadjuri, which would be decided on preferences.
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson said it was unclear how many seats the party had won but pointed to state leader Cory Bernardi’s success in winning his upper house seat.
She said the party would be going hard for former federal Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer and at the Victorian state election.
“There’s a movement. There’s an undercurrent, and it’s people saying we’ve had a gutful. We want our country back. We want to have a voice,” she told Sky News.
Mr Bernardi said he was smiling.
“Because today an earthquake has rattled the foundations of uni-party politics in South Australia,” he said.
Liberal leader Ashton Hurn retained her seat in the Barossa Valley and will remain in the leadership role.
Federal Liberal senator Anne Ruston said the party had been sent a clear message and needed to return to the centre right.
She said the party could not win by moving to the the right or the left.
At the Labor victory celebration, Mr Malinauskas read a Henry Lawson poem, The Duty of Australians, and noted that our patriotism was “less brash and boastful and more dogged and determined”.
“Diversity has always been our greatest strength,” he said.
A record 454,862 (34.5 per cent) people cast early votes and 174,000 (13.2 per cent) requested postal ballots, meaning almost half the 1.3 million eligible voters had potentially voted before election day.
Premier Peter Malinauskas queued for almost an hour at a booth in his electorate of Croydon on Saturday morning, along with his wife Annabel and children, Jack, George, Eliza and Sophie.
Mr Malinauskas said he had followed his election day ritual of going for a run before heading to the Woodville Gardens booth with his family.
“It’s the first time I’ve voted with four kids, which brings its own challenges,” he said.
The premier’s four young children waited patiently in the poll queue, but were understandably wilting by the time their parents finally arrived at the ballot box.
They were rewarded soon after with democracy sausages, with their father telling them “team Mali, dad’s got to go and do some work” as he rushed off for an appearance with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Liberal leader Ashton Hurn voted at Angaston Town Hall in her Barossa Valley electorate of Schubert before heading to Adelaide to visit other booths.
Another 174,000 (13.2 per cent) had requested postal ballots, meaning almost half the 1.3 million eligible voters had potentially voted before election day.
Adelaide University emeritus professor of politics Clem Macintyre said the rise and rise of One Nation had the potential to create a watershed moment in Australian politics, and the end of two-party politics at a federal level.
“If they do make a breakthrough, they’re going to have to work hard to be a more serious and viable alternative government,” he said.
“It’s more frustration with the major parties … I think we can still say One Nation is a party of disaffected voters.”
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