As the 2026 state election nears, who will run for the SA Liberal Party?

Australia Broadcast Center

01-07-2025

It's only 37 weeks until South Australians head to the polls.
While plenty of voters are not paying attention at this stage, the major parties are preparing for political combat – preselecting candidates, devising campaign strategies and doorknocking in key seats.
But cooking up an election winning campaign is a much easier task for the Labor Party right now.
The Malinauskas Government's stock continues to rise despite major questions over whether it has met its key election promises.
And two by-election victories last year have given Labor a commanding 28 Lower House seats compared to the Liberal Party's 13.
The government is already looking for more, with Premier Peter Malinauskas last month announcing candidates for four Liberal-held seats – Morphett, Colton, Heysen and Unley – on top of existing targets Morialta and Ngadjuri (formerly Frome).
Meanwhile, the state Liberals have just watched their federal counterparts get voted out of metropolitan Adelaide, leaving them with just two MPs in Canberra.
Compounding matters was a YouGov poll published last week showing the SA Liberals could suffer a similar fate.
The shocking, but not surprising, survey had the Malinauskas government on a 67 to 33 per cent two-party-preferred lead.
If replicated on election day, that would leave the Liberals with just two seats in state parliament.
With that sort of doom and gloom on the horizon, who would want to run for the Liberal Party right now?
Frank Pangallo, apparently.
Channel 7 reported on Monday that Mr Pangallo – a former Today Tonight journalist who was elected to the upper house in 2018 under Nick Xenophon's SA-Best ticket – was poised to join the Liberal Party for a tilt at the Adelaide Hills seat of Waite.
Mr Pangallo told the ABC on Tuesday that he was yet to decide his next move and still has 'several options' in front of him, while Liberal Party state director Alex Hyde said the party is 'open to those who share our centre-right values'.
With his term in the upper house expiring in 2026, it's unsurprising that Mr Pangallo would be seeking a political lifeboat – SA-Best garnered just one per cent of the statewide vote in 2022, below even the Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis parties.
Mr Pangallo left SA-Best in 2023 to stand as an independent, citing differences with party colleague Connie Bonaros.
"I have so much more I want to achieve and get done," he said on Tuesday.
"As such, I am considering a range of options that will give me the best opportunity to continue to serve all South Australians."
But it is questionable whether Waite is where Mr Pangallo will find a political safe haven.
First-term Labor MP Catherine Hutchesson holds the seat on a margin of around four per cent – not easy to overturn even when the political wind is behind you.
One person who knows a lot about Waite – and switching parties – is Martin Hamilton-Smith.
The one-time Liberal leader represented the seat from 1997 to 2018 and shocked the South Australian political world with his defection to the Weatherill government in 2014.
Asked about Mr Pangallo's mooted switch to the lower house, Mr Hamilton-Smith said the electorate would be after a 'strong local community member' who would 'bring new life into the party'.
'So, it'll be interesting if the Liberal Party choose to run an existing politician in a seat like Waite,' he said.
'And also, transfers from the upper house to the lower house are notoriously difficult.
Mr Hamilton-Smith is also no stranger to the challenge of preselecting candidates.
He said ahead of the 2010 election, he interviewed 10 people to run for the Liberal Party – all of whom turned him down.
Speaking about Opposition leader Vincent Tarzia, Mr Hamilton-Smith said: 'I don't envy his job."
'It'd be very tough at the moment trying to find candidates that are fresh, new, talented, capable, strong community advocates,' he said.
'You're asking people to give up their jobs and dedicate three to six months to campaigning, put themselves out there in the Liberal guernsey [and] do a lot of hard work with little prospect of winning.'
Liberal insiders can, however, point to a number of candidates it has locked in for marginal seats next year.
The party has preselected candidates for several seats it has lost to Labor over the last three years, including Dunstan, Gibson, King, Davenport, Newland, Adelaide and Elder.
It's also selected replacements for David Pisoni in Unley and John Gardner in Morialta – two seats that are now high on Labor's target list given the absence of an incumbent.
But the Liberals were hit with a curveball last month when frontbencher Matt Cowdrey announced he would not be running for re-election in 2026.
That has thrown open a Liberal preselection contest for his coastal seat of Colton, potentially making it more vulnerable to Labor.
The Liberal Party is also yet to preselect a candidate for former leader David Speirs's seat of Black after last year's disastrous by-election loss.
While attention turned to Waite this week, another seat will loom large over the coming months.
Labor insiders say their next preselection cab off the rank is the Opposition leader's seat of Hartley.
Mr Tarzia holds the north-eastern suburbs electorate on a margin of around 3.6 per cent and is considered by both sides of parliament to be a strong local member.
Ironically, he held onto the seat in 2018 in the face of a challenge from Mr Pangallo's former leader, Nick Xenophon.
While defeating the Opposition leader will be no easy feat, one Labor source said there would be 'tactical value' in keeping the leader occupied with his own electorate rather than the Liberal Party's campaign.
The political chess match has 37 weeks left to run.