WA Beating the gas crisis

WA Budget shares prosperity

TAS Paul Lennon resigns

VIC The sporting capital

ACT Record job figures

NT New Cabinet team

TAS Courage brings change

SA Intervention on the lands

NT New ministry sworn in

...more

The Labor Government in South Australia is just a handful of votes away from defeat at the 18 March 2006 election. Despite what the pundits say – and despite what some people are inferring from recent poll results – next year’s election is going to be extremely close.

I believe the Liberals are desperate to break the dominance of Labor at the State and Territory level, and they want to claim a beachhead in South Australia. I predict that, in order to do this, they will pour every bit of Federal Liberal resources available into the coming State campaign.

So my key message to ALP members is that the Liberals will be a formidable opponent next year.

We know the Parliamentary Liberal Party in South Australia is a rabble – that it’s lazy, bereft of ideas and vision, and deeply disunited. But that doesn’t mean grassroots support for the Liberals won’t hold up strongly at the election, and that they can’t run very effective and targeted campaigns in specific marginal seats.

It seems to me that any party that holds eight of South Australia’s eleven federal seats, has four Ministers in Federal Cabinet, and is flushed with cash, has a fundamentally sound basis of support.

Avoid, remember & remind
In light of this situation, there are three things Labor supporters must do over the coming months.

The first is to avoid any sense of complacency about the closeness of next year’s campaign.

The second is to remember – and to remind friends and workmates – that Labor in South Australia remains a minority government.

Because we’re managing our numbers on the floor of Parliament and getting on with the job of governing, many South Australians seem to think we have a comfortable majority. But, of course, we don’t – so we have absolutely no margin for error come March. The simple fact is that if South Australians want a Labor Government in their State, they will have to vote for one – not simply assume that we will be re-elected in any case.

Our third task is to remind people about the things Labor has done, is doing and will do to improve the lives of South Australians.

Here are just some of the achievements we need to emphasise:

• South Australia’s record-low level of unemployment and its all-time high number of people in work – resulting, in part, from our creation of 50,700 jobs since 2002;

• the excellent state of the local economy – achieved without privatisation, while still delivering massive tax cuts;

• the large number of major projects completed, in the works or on the horizon – such as the new Adelaide Airport, the Air Warfare Destroyers contract, and the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine;

• State Labor’s opposition to the Howard Government’s proposed new industrial relations system – a system that will only endanger the enviable and strategically valuable industrial harmony we currently enjoy;

• the Government’s rebuilding of the health and education systems;

• our leadership on the environment – especially on climate change, the River Murray and renewable energy;

• Labor’s successful campaign to stop the Howard Government from turning South Australia into “the nuclear dump State”;

• the Government’s tough new laws on bikies, sex offenders and hoon drivers, along with South Australia’s falling crime rates and increased on-the-ground resources for police; and

• Labor’s continuing support for the less well off, especially the homeless and Aboriginal people.