Hmmm ... SA Premier Xenophon in 2018 ... SA political class need an absolute thrashing and it might come from no less than a self-declared Marxist ... who wooda thunked it !!!
Nick Xenophon is almost twice as popular as South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill and Liberal Opposition Leader Steven Marshall, according to a leaked poll five months out from the next state election.
The departing senator, who will stand in the state seat of Hartley, is on track to achieve his goal of being a kingmaker at the March election, with a privately commissioned Galaxy poll putting his party SA Best in a tight race with the Liberal Party and ahead of Labor.
The statewide poll of 806 voters last week shows the Liberals on a primary vote of 31 per cent. Senator Xenophon’s SA Best is running a close second at 30 per cent. Labor, which has been in power in South Australia since 2002, is trailing with a primary vote of just 26 per cent.
Senator Xenophon is ahead as preferred premier, with 41 per cent support, while Mr Weatherill and Mr Marshall have both slumped to just 21 per cent, about half the SA Best leader’s support.
The Liberals’ primary vote at the start of last year, according to a state Newspoll, was 38 per cent, well short of its 2014 election watermark of 44.8 per cent, while Labor’s primary vote at the time was stable at 36 per cent.
The leaked polling was conducted for the Australian Bankers’ Association, which is fighting the Weatherill government’s move to impose a bank tax.
The results come after Senator Xenophon played down suggestions on ABC radio that he “might be South Australian premier within six months”. “I hope I just win a marginal lower-house seat in South Australia, so I don’t get carried away,” Senator Xenophon said yesterday.
The poll was conducted between October 10 and 12, when issues such as proposed changes to GST revenue, the opposition’s energy policy, SA Best’s vetting of candidates, a state seat poll and industrial action at major public hospitals were dominating the news.
The latest polling is the first statewide poll since Senator Xenophon’s bombshell announcement a fortnight ago that he would quit federal politics to run for Hartley, a marginal Liberal-held seat, at the election on March 17.
SA Best will field candidates in up to 20 seats in a bid to win the balance of power. But Senator Xenophon has said he is wary of spreading the party “too thin” so he will run only five candidates in the upper house and up to 20 candidates in an even spread of Liberal and Labor-held “winnable” lower house seats.
He has also ruled out any kind of power-sharing deal with either major party and promised not to accept a cabinet position, so he could remain a “fearless watchdog of whomever is in power”.
Two polls last week in Hartley, in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs, showed Senator Xenophon on track to win. The Advertiser-Galaxy poll found the senator would win 53 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote to depose sitting Liberal Vincent Tarzia.
It gave Senator Xenophon 35 per cent of the primary vote but he surged ahead on preferences.
A Seven News-ReachTEL poll had Senator Xenophon 50-50 with Mr Tarzia on a two-party-preferred basis. Senator Xenophon’s primary vote was 21.7 per cent.
Labor, which previously held the seat, saw its primary vote slump to less than 20 per cent in both polls.
Senator Xenophon first ran for office at the 1997 South Australian election in the state’s upper house on an independent No Pokies ticket. He switched to the Senate in 2008.
The departing senator has only made one official policy announcement in his fledgling state campaign, calling for sweeping changes to the South Australian parliament, including fewer ministers, fewer MPs and more sitting days.
He wants the ministry cut from 14 to eight, with the number of MPs across the two houses of parliament reduced from 69 to 51.
Mr Weatherill and Mr Marshall have said the policy lacks detail, could not come into effect until 2022, and was not one of the big issues for voters.
But Senator Xenophon said change was needed because the parliament “doesn’t work very hard”. “It’s about time parliament was turned into a workhorse for South Australians, not just a rocking horse,” he said.
The Labor Party starts the election campaign with 23 MPs, while the Liberals have been reduced to just 19, amid ICAC charges against Troy Bell in Mount Gambier, the defection of former leader Martin Hamilton-Smith to Labor’s cabinet, and Morphett MP Duncan McFetridge turning independent after losing preselection.
A redraw of state electoral boundaries had put the Liberals in a favourable position to win in March, but the personal entry of Senator Xenophon into the campaign has turned the election into a three-cornered contest. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...l/news-story/c0ff02ecd15a438c25ac4999e2a39d96
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