South Australia: January to June 2022

The first half of 2022 in South Australia was always going to focus on the state election which, under the fixed four-year-term regime, had long been cemented in for 19 March. The Marshall Liberal Government’s victory in March 2018 had ended a sixteen-year period of Labor rule. The government had spent most of 2020 and 2021 primarily focused on managing the COVID-19 pandemic. The political signals from other jurisdictions had suggested that incumbency ought to be an advantage for a government seeking re-election. This proved not to be the case in South Australia. The election saw the vanquishing of the Liberals and the return of Labor to office. The period ended with a Malinauskas Labor Government firmly in the saddle but confronting the same range of challenges which had afflicted its predecessor.