51 Results

The result of the South Australian election is being challenged by a political outsider in a reticent court and the South Australian public is being left in the dark by the local press, writes David Donovan.

The final results from the South Australian election are in, and there were a few bits of history involved, reports Andrew Bartlett. Most notably, 21-year-old Kelly Vincent has become the youngest woman ever elected to an Australian Parliament.

Crikey readers weigh in on the population debate and the SA election. Plus, a Qantas spokesman fights back over ‘cooking the books’ allegations.

SA Liberal leader Isobel Redmond started the week basking in having almost won the election. A week later she’d dumped her deputy and been rolled on her preference for his replacement. Michael Jacobs explains what went down.

Tasmania’s system isn’t perfect, but it’s streets ahead of other states when it comes to fairness. The rest of the country should be watching and learning.

Premier Mike Rann’s personal approval rating is now below 50%, and everyone who’s sat an exam knows bitterly that less than half marks is a fail, writes Hendrik Gout.

Yes, it was perhaps a closer election in South Australia on the weekend than the ALP would have liked, but there are two significant lessons to learn for the federal election. Be positive and be careful of the spin, says Chris Kenny.

Crikey readers blast Crikey over our SA election coverage. Will you be seeing articles by Bill O’Reilly next week in Crikey? asks one reader.

It wasn’t just the ALP and Libs going head-to-head in the weekend’s elections: it was SA’s single-member preferential voting system up against Tasmania’s single transferable vote proportional representation system (aka Hare-Clark). So which works best?

Yesterday, Mike Rann described his government’s likely narrow election win as “the sweetest victory of all.” Um, really?

As the air cleared on Saturday night and Sunday morning, word was that the results in South Australia and Tasmania were too close to call. However, for all but the most starry-eyed Liberal optimists, that was only half true.

The Labor Government of SA Premier Mike Rann was this weekend kicked in the sensitive parts, not stabbed fatally in the heart. And they have dirty tricks to thank, says Hendrik Gout.

The results in South Australia and Tasmania were hardly what Kevin Rudd would have chosen; but in the end the damage was more psychological than psephological.

The swing against Labor in SA may have been smaller than in Tasmania, but the latter was just the rotting corpse of the “old” ALP further decomposing. More troubling for Rudd is how weak the “new” ALP has proven in SA, says The Piping Shrike.

Wow, the Liberals came second in both the Tasmanian and the SA elections! What a great result. Except, that means they lost both elections, not that you’d realise from reading today’s headlines.

Peter van Onselen has a blow-by-blow account of how ALP strategist Bruce Hawker engineered Mike Rann’s unlikely victory in SA. And if that’s what he did for an unpopular leader, think about what he can do for Rudd.

The SA and Tasmanian battles may be over, but the 2010 political war has just begun, and the pundits are sharpening their swords.

However, the trend to the Liberals which began when Isobel Redmond became leader last July has continued to gather pace, to the extent that Labor now hopes for little more than to hang on as a minority government.