Pyne and Downer weigh in on Liberal SA wipe-out, Greens increase vote

Former Liberals Alexander Downer and Christopher Pyne have spoken out, while Greens leader Robert Simms believes his party could snare a second Legislative Council seat. (ABC News: Che Chorley/ Ryan Sheridan/Tony Hill)

In short:

Recriminations have begun after the SA Liberal Party's 2026 state election loss.

On top of losing half a dozen seats, the party's primary vote is in single digits in some Adelaide electorates, with Liberal candidates falling behind One Nation and the Greens.

What's next?

Former minister and Liberal moderate Christopher Pyne is calling for change to the party's constitution, while former foreign minister Alexander Downer says factional attacks in the media have to stop.

Former senior Liberals have weighed in on the disastrous state election result, calling for factions to work together for the sake of the party.

Former defence minister Christopher Pyne said constitutional change might be needed within the Liberal Party to get rid of the "winner takes all" nature of internal elections, while former foreign minister Alexander Downer said the party needed to better articulate what it stood for.

The South Australian Liberal Party is set to win only four lower seats in the next state parliament, after One Nation received more first-preference votes in Saturday's poll.

As counting continued today, the Liberals were narrowly ahead in two other lower house seats — Heysen in the Adelaide Hills and Morphett near Glenelg Beach, where frontbenchers Josh Teague and Stephen Patterson are fighting to stay in parliament.

But the party's primary vote has collapsed in other parts of suburban Adelaide, with some Liberal candidates polling on par with the Greens and well behind One Nation.

In Davenport — a southern suburbs seat held by variations of the Liberal Party from 1970 to 2022 and represented by former leaders Dean Brown and Iain Evans — the Liberals are running third with a primary vote of 14.5 per cent.

That is down from 42.1 per cent when the party won the seat at the 2018 state election.

It is a similar story in Elder, which was considered a battleground seat in the past three elections.

The Liberal Party won it in 2018 with a 42.3 per primary vote, which has now sunk to 18.2 per cent.

In Black, which was complicated by former Liberal leader David Speirs's attempted political comeback as an independent, the Liberal Party is running fifth behind One Nation, Speirs and the Greens.

And in the outer suburbs, where One Nation is challenging traditionally safe Labor territory, the Liberal vote is even lower.

In Elizabeth, the Liberal candidate is running fourth on 5.8 per cent, behind One Nation (32.6 per cent) and the Greens (10.3 per cent). A similar count is playing out in adjacent Ramsay.

Similar to last year's federal election, the result has already led to recriminations over whether the Liberals should head more to the right to counter One Nation or to stay in the centre with Labor.

Mr Pyne, the former Liberal federal member for the seat of Sturt, is a moderate and said rebuilding the party's culture needed to be its first priority, which would lead to people working together more cohesively and developing better, and more popular, policies.

"I think you have to talk to each other. There has to be cooperation," he told ABC Radio Adelaide this morning.

"I think there has to be change to the constitution so that there's not a winner-takes-all outcome for internal party elections.

"You have to work in a way that is collaborative rather than trying to defeat one side or the other."

Call for 'discipline and unity'

The SA Liberal Party's state executive, which manages the day-to-day affairs of the party, is controlled by the party's right faction.

This is partly due to a rightward shift in the party's governing body, State Council, which elects the president and vice presidents onto the state executive. State Council is partially composed of delegates sent by the party's local branches.

Former Liberal prime minister John Howard famously described his party as a "broad church".

A leader of the right faction in South Australia, senator Alex Antic, suggested on election night that the moderate and conservative factions should split into different parties.

"I hear rumours consistently now about the left faction of the Liberal Party looking to start their own Liberal Party movement and, if that is the case, then perhaps that should happen," he told Channel 7.

But Mr Pyne said there was "absolutely not" any such move and that the range of views in the party from the centre to the right was still its "great strength".

Alexander Downer says the Liberal Party's moderate and conservative factions need to work together. (ABC News)

Mr Downer, also a moderate and the only opposition leader to hold a South Australian seat in federal parliament, said factional attacks in the media needed to stop.

"Those different sort of aisles of the church, if I could stick with the metaphor, they need to work together," he said.

"They don't need to separate into different buildings altogether.

"Going around and blaming one section of the party for the election loss and not the other, I don't think that's productive.

South Australian senator Leah Blyth, from the right, was elected SA Liberal president in 2024.

Leah Blyth has reflected on what the SA election results mean for the federal Liberals. (Facebook: Leah Blyth)

Senator Blyth said having four different state leaders over four years "didn't help", especially with one of them, Speirs, being convicted of drug offences.

She told ABC Radio National people at the polling booths were angry, both against the Liberals and Labor.

She urged "discipline and unity" among Liberals.

"That's the message that I'm taking and we've got to make sure that we are putting up policies that are in the interests of Australians at a federal level and that we've got to stop talking about ourselves," she said.

Greens call election result 'big achievement'

If it can happen in South Australia, it can happen anywhere.That's the takeaway from One Nation's performance at this state election.

While One Nation was the talk of the election for taking seats from the Liberals and challenging Labor, the Greens had their most successful election in South Australia, winning 10 per cent of the lower house vote so far and 11 per cent in early counting in the Legislative Council.

That is up from 9 per cent in 2022 in both houses.

While Melanie Selwood has secured an upper house seat, Greens leader Robert Simms believes the party still has a shot at a second red leather seat.

It is also running about 300 votes behind Labor for second place in Heysen, where the minor party is trying to unseat Liberal deputy leader Josh Teague.

Robert Simms says Saturday's outcome is the Greens' strongest result at a state election. (ABC News: Tony Hill)

"It's a pretty big achievement for us, especially in an election where there was such a strong swing to another third party," Mr Simms said.

"And Labor and the Liberals, of course, lost votes to One Nation. Well, the Green vote has not just stayed steady, it's increased."

Mr Simms was a Greens senator from 2015–2016, when now-One Nation state leader Cory Bernardi was in the Senate for Liberals.

Mr Simms said he could not see many issues they would be on the same page on.

"We will just have to watch this space," he said.

"It's an uncharted territory for all of us in the upper house with such a big One Nation presence."