From a 'mountain to climb' to over a cliff, SA Liberals face total wipeout

By Jessica Haynes

Topic:State and Territory Elections

Ashton Hurn arrived all smiles at Liberal HQ after the party faced a staggering election loss. (ABC News: Tricia Watkinson)

When Ashton Hurn took on the role of South Australian Liberal leader just a few months ago, she likened the challenge to climbing a "mountain".

Rather than climbing the mountain, the Liberal Party has now fallen off a cliff.

The party has not just lost, but has suffered one of the most staggering election disasters in Australian political history.

In a country that has had an entrenched two-party system for 80 years, the Liberals appear to have somehow slipped to third, at least on the primary vote.

"You do have to concede the people have spoken and there has been quite a loud message sent," Liberal Senator Anne Ruston said on the ABC's election night coverage.

If you had told even the most pessimistic Liberal when Ms Hurn took the leadership that their vote would fall this far, it's highly unlikely they would have believed you.

Across Adelaide, once very safe Liberal seats are now in Labor hands.

Perhaps most significantly, the Liberals appear to have finished significantly behind One Nation on the primary vote.

An "earthquake", "a massive reshaping of the electorate map" and a "clobbering of the Liberal vote across metropolitan Adelaide" was how the ABC's chief election analyst Casey Briggs described the desertion of the Liberals in favour of One Nation.

The national repercussions of that earthquake are sure to be enormous.

Liberals at both a state and federal level will be asking what it means for them, while One Nation branches in other states might be dreaming about whether they can pull off something similar to South Australia.

But in the 'Festival State', the impact of this result will be felt for years to come.

And the Liberal soul-searching is inevitably going to run deep, as now-former MPs, those left behind in parliament, branch members and supporters grapple with some key questions.

Is this just a blip — a horrendously damaging one, of course — or is this getting into 'existential' territory? How soon can a major party come back from a result this ugly? Can they ever?

The climb up the mountain has now entered uncharted territory, with little precedence for a party to find its way back.

A record number of South Australians — 454,800 — cast their votes before polling day. (ABC News: Trent Murphy)

Until this weekend, the 1993 SA election after the State Bank disaster was the bar for electoral thrashings.

Labor was annihilated at that election, as voters took out their fury over that 1991 catastrophe.

As bad as that was for Labor, things appear worse for the Liberals now.

Labor clung onto 10 seats at that election and got 30 per cent of the vote.

It looks like the Liberals won't even get 20 per cent this time around.

And the key question the few surviving Liberals are bound to be asking themselves as they wake up tomorrow is 'how do we fix this?'

The South Australian branch of the party has long been divided between moderates who want to bring the party closer to the political centre and influential conservatives who think the party needs to appeal more strongly to its base on the right.

That discussion will no doubt pick up significant steam in the coming days.

So, too, will discussions about whether this Liberal campaign hit the mark.

Liberal leader Ashton Hurn's campaign messaging was around going "back to basics". (ABC News: Che Chorley, CHE CHORLEY)

Liberal Leader Ashton Hurn focused her campaign messaging on going "back to basics", tackling bread-and-butter issues like health, housing and cost-of-living.

Despite promises to slash public transport fares to 50 cents and make significant changes to stamp duty, the voting public were apparently not convinced.

Ms Hurn had a tough battle from the start, but the metaphorical mountain of the challenge was met with some incredibly stormy weather, including events outside of her control at a national level with Liberal leadership turmoil in Canberra.

"I've been up front about some of the challenges that my political party has gone through, and some of that comes from Canberra," she told 891 ABC Adelaide on Friday.

"I say that as a matter of fact, it's not an excuse."

Brutal blow

The mountain climb continued to provide even more hurdles in the polls as a new, and surprisingly influential, contender appeared in the form of One Nation.

Even as poll after poll during the campaign pointed to a looming disaster, Ms Hurn kept a brave face and insisted she was not concerned.

On election eve, Ms Hurn was still aiming high.

Polls predict the Liberals are heading for a wipe-out in South Australia on Saturday, but party leader Ashton Hurn says she is still working with the goal of becoming the state's leader rather than analysing what went wrong.

In a FaceTime call between Ms Hurn and John Howard, the former prime minister was also trying to stay positive.

"There's a bit of a David and Goliath thing about it," Mr Howard told Ms Hurn during that call.

"But remember what happened to Goliath?"

In that biblical tale, David did the unthinkable and killed the giant.

But in this South Australian reality, David just suffered the most brutal of blows.

During her concession speech on Saturday evening she said the party was "going to come back stronger than ever".

The path to recovery looks fraught, at best.