The 21 March South Australian election may well be remembered as the beginning of a new era in Australian politics. The Liberal Party, one side of the two-party duopoly that has characterised Australian politics since the 1940s, has been humiliated by the far-right One Nation, which has captured much of the conservative vote.
While Labor secured a resounding majority of seats, its primary vote dropped slightly overall and dramatically in some areas of traditional strength. These losses were compensated for by gains in some urban areas that were, until recently, Liberal-aligned.
But the main story of the election was the surge of One Nation, mostly at the expense of the Liberal Party. The Liberals were supplanted by One Nation as the main opposition party throughout the state, finishing third on overall primary votes.
One Nation is currently sitting on 22.4 percent of the primary vote, behind Labor’s 37.4 percent and ahead of the Liberals’ 19.4 percent. The party has won at least one lower house seat and is in the running for three more, as well as winning three of the eleven upper house seats up for election. The One Nation surge, suggested in polling over the last several months, has been shown to be very much real.
But even before One Nation’s rise, the South Australian Liberals were due to face a serious reckoning. In the 2022 state election, Labor began making serious inroads into the affluent suburban seats that were traditionally Liberal Party heartlands. Labor picked up a further two suburban seats from the Liberals in subsequent by-elections. In the 2025 federal election, the Liberals lost their final Adelaide-based federal seat to Labor, and booth results suggested they could face a similar wipe-out in the state election.
A chaotic revolving door of leaders added to the Liberals’ problems. The party became the subject of ridicule when the Advertiser published a video of one former leader, David Speirs, snorting cocaine on his kitchen bench, which led to his arrest and conviction for supplying a controlled substance. Labor took full advantage of the turmoil to solidify its image as the only party capable of forming government.
The state Labor government, by contrast, is broadly popular. Premier Peter Malinauskas enjoys the highest net approval of any political leader in Australia, with a net positive rating of 33 percent according to a poll published by DemosAU in March. With the state economy growing, Malinauskas has been able to attract the support of business, developers and real estate groups, and has gotten away with suppressing wage growth for public sector workers. With neither a competent right-wing opposition nor any serious challenge from the unions, Labor has managed to weather what should be damaging controversies, from its handling of the algal bloom to the ongoing ambulance ramping crisis at hospitals.
South Australia is a very urban and very concentrated state: more than three quarters of the population live in Adelaide, and 33 of the state lower house’s 47 seats are in the city. This has favoured the Labor Party, which since the end of a rural gerrymander at the 1970 election has been in government for 40 of the past 56 years.
What is notable about this election, though, is that Labor has consolidated support in seats that were the traditional base of the Liberals. Labor had swings towards it across affluent inner-city, leafy and beach-side suburbs, including a swing of more than 20 percent in the affluent suburban seat of Waite, which was once safe Liberal: the Liberal candidate ended up conceding before the counting even began. Labor has won at least four metropolitan seats from the Liberals, and on the current count the only Adelaide-based seat the Liberals are certain of retaining is Bragg, the wealthiest electorate in the state.
While the South Australian Liberals may be particularly inept, their problems are not unique. As the far right have grown globally, a section of the Liberal base around the country has radicalised to the right. In South Australia, the right-wing factional warrior Alex Antic brought fundamentalist Christians and anti-vaxxers into the party in successful takeovers of local branches, with similar pushes happening in other states. This has contributed to sections of the party’s more moderate voting base rejecting the party in favour of Teal independents, while in South Australia it has been Labor that has benefited. This trend would not be easily reversed even if there was the will to do it: affluent voters have found that they get on pretty well under Labor governments.
With the rise of One Nation, the Liberal Party now faces a mortal threat on its right flank. One Nation has become the leading right-wing party across much of suburban Adelaide, leaving the Liberals trailing behind in the outer suburbs north of Gepps Cross and south of the Darlington escarpment. Except for the leafy hinterland regions of the Adelaide Hills, One Nation also ran first or second in every regional seat. One Nation largely took votes from the Liberals, although there were swings from Labor in some outer suburban seats.
The level of organisation of One Nation is highly uneven across the state. While the party reported an attendance of 250 people at a pre-election event in the small town of Eudunda, across much of Adelaide they lacked a visible ground campaign, with no campaigners at several polling booths. They nonetheless were still able to get strong votes in seats where they had little visible campaign. Support for One Nation was buoyed by constant attention from the legacy media, a reactionary social media campaign from lead candidate and former Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, and the personal brand of leader Pauline Hanson. On the campaign trail, Bernardi mocked the indigenous Kaurna language, peddled conspiracy theories about COVID-19 being a fake pandemic, doubled down on his past comments linking same-sex marriage to bestiality and defended Hanson’s claims that there were “no good Muslims”.
One Nation’s chaotic track record means many are sceptical about the party’s ability to hold on to its newly elected members, but there is no room for complacency from the left. The opportunity for them to build a more serious far-right machine is there. Cory Bernardi is a right-wing factional warrior with years of political experience fighting moderates in the Liberals, and brings a level of experience that other elected One Nation MPs have lacked. The party has also been normalised by the media and other political parties. It was once Liberal Party policy to preference One Nation last. Those days are long gone, with the Liberals preferencing the party throughout the state. On election night, Malinauskas emphasised his willingness to work with One Nation MPs.
With a popular but right-wing Labor government, and an insurgent far right, there is space for a left alternative. The Greens, with its strategy of orienting to affluent Liberal-held seats, is not such an alternative, despite the party increasing its statewide vote in this election. In the seats of Croydon and Enfield, there were promising results in the SA Socialists’ first election campaign.
The breakthrough of One Nation is a warning for the rest of the country. While the particularly rotten state of the Liberals in South Australia was undoubtedly a bonus for One Nation, the result nevertheless shows a significant section of society are willing to get behind One Nation, even in a highly urban state. The left needs to get organised to confront this far-right menace.
