Scott Morrison says Russia must pay ‘high price’ for Ukraine invasion as further measures announced; Steven Marshall steps down after losing South Australia election to Labor and Peter Malinauskus; Josh Frydenberg says federal budget measures won’t ‘overheat’ economy; four Covid deaths in NSW and three in SA. Follow all the day’s news
The federal finance minister, Simon Birmingham, is appearing on ABC’s Insiders now, and of course, has been asked why the Liberals experienced a landslide loss in the state election there overnight.
Birmingham says that a number of voters were potentially tricked by “misleading statements” about Labor’s ability to stop ambulance ramping.
I think always when an election is lost, there are a number of factors at play. I think that history will judge Steven Marshall’s government for its policy achievements and management more kindly than the electorate did yesterday. The economic confidence he delivered to South Australia, the ongoing growth in what will be higher-paying, more highly skilled [workers] in SA for many years to come, the transformation of schooling SA, investments in hospitals, these will be positives which he will be marked up for but clearly a disappointing day for the Liberal family in SA to have that result.
The campaign was one in which we saw the Labor party run a very targeted, very singularly focused campaign around hospitals and ambulances. I think there were many misleading aspects to that campaign and even the Electoral Commission found so in the last day or so, but that again is a reminder to all of us that we can’t underscore the potential for Labor to run these types of scare campaigns just like they did with mediscare back in 2016, particularly when they can roll out the public sector unions to devastating effects.
So is that your take on this election result, the electorate was tricked?
No, not entirely. I do think that Labor’s campaign was effective, but I also think, as the Electoral Commission found, that it was based on misleading statements and that of course is something that does mean that some voters potentially were tricked but equally I think Covid did play a very difficult role for Steven Marshall.
When he opened the borders from SA to the rest of the country on 23 November, it was 24 November, the very day after that Omicron was first reported to the World Health Organization as a variant of concern. You couldn’t have had perhaps more unlucky timing than Steven Marshall faced in that regard and that the carefully calibrated plans he had for reopening were clearly blown out of the water at that time and that did create real challenges for the Government through the run-up and lead-up to the election, and, of course, in terms of what the narrative of their campaign was.
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