Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to see Senator Farrell is at last starting to agree with some of my comments. It was extraordinary how the media pandered to Mr Xenophon's stunts and gimmicks for so many years and rarely held him to account or asked him to provide any funding substantiation for some of the things he threw out there. But as the election campaign rolled on, and Mr Xenophon went from being the populist 'keep the bastards honest' party to thinking he could be a real alternative to the two major parties, it was quite interesting how quickly the wheels fell off.

I pay credit to some of the people who worked extraordinarily hard on this election campaign. Nobody deserves more credit than Vince Tarzia—the lion of Hartley, as he is now called—who not only won his own marginal seat but also overcame the most extraordinary looming threat anybody could ever expect when Nick Xenophon decided he was going to move back to South Australia and take on Vince Tarzia in Hartley. The extraordinary hard work Vince has done over the past four years as member for Hartley saw the challenge very easily overcome in the end. The people of Hartley saw him as a genuine, hardworking grassroots local member, and he was rewarded on election night with quite an easy victory; he even saw a two-party preferred swing to him. I think Bollywood ads and campaign stunts were well and truly not what the voters of Hartley wanted; they wanted a solid local member.

The Liberal success didn't end there. Paula Luethen defeated the Labor candidate in a tight contest in King. Paula worked absolutely tirelessly for the entire election campaign and was rewarded by the people of King, who put their faith in her to be their representative for the next four years. Carolyn Habib overcame the incumbent, Annabel Digance, in Elder. She defeated her this time, after suffering the indignity of quite a nasty campaign in 2014 where a whole heap of racist tactics were used against Carolyn. Not to be dissuaded, she came back and ran a fantastic campaign for a very comfortable victory. Matt Cowdrey, Australia's most awarded Paralympian swimming star, fought a very tight contest in the seat of Colton and was also victorious. But that wasn't because he was a Paralympian; he succeeded because he doorknocked his entire electorate. There are a number of others. Josh Teague, in the Adelaide Hills seat of Heysen, fought off a very determined fight from the Nick Xenophon Team to win his seat, as did all our members and new candidates in the Adelaide Hills area. David Basham retained the seat of Finniss for us and, as I mentioned earlier, Andy Gilfillan is still fighting a very good fight against incumbent Leon Bignell in Mawson. A couple of other country members gave come in: Fraser Ellis, in Narungga, and Nick McBride in MacKillop.

It was a great result on Saturday night. It reflected that the people of South Australia obviously thought the hard work, determination and solid and stable government offered by Steven Marshall was what they wanted for the next four years. He has worked very hard and he had a plan. Gimmicks, stunts and playing around were never going to encourage the people of South Australia to support a party into government. They wanted stability, certainty into the future and somebody who wasn't going to play games.

The most important thing that will support and sustain Steven Marshall over the next four years is the fact that he has such depth in his team. He has a team of members of parliament, all of whom have worked extremely hard. He has a new team that's been elected, plus a team that's been there for a number of years—a solid team. It was great to see Vickie Chapman elected as the Deputy Premier, so we have a gender equity balance at the top of the ticket, with the Premier being a male and Vickie being a female. She is there because she is an absolutely competent and capable performer. She will be an absolute powerhouse to sit behind Steven and assist him as he delivers his first term as Premier of South Australia. Sitting behind them is a team of great members of parliament who will become great ministers. I look forward to working with my very dear friend and colleague Tim Whetstone as we implement policies for rural and regional South Australia. Given the neglect of rural and regional South Australia over the last 16 years, we have got a lot of work to do to catch up. But I am sure, with the combination of fantastic local members that we have out in rural and regional South Australia and the ministers who have been appointed to support rural and regional South Australia, we are now going to see all South Australians benefit from the actions of their government.