The South Australian Liberal Party will retain its opposition status in South Australia, the ABC is projecting, despite One Nation’s expected victory in a second lower house in the state’s parliament.
The ABC has projected that the Liberal Party has retained Heysen in the Adelaide Hills, giving the party five seats, while One Nation will win at most four.
Deputy Liberal leader Josh Teague has been locked in a tight count in Heysen, and this afternoon was 264 votes ahead of Labor’s Marisa Bell in the two-candidate preferred count produced by the Electoral Commission.
The vast bulk of the votes remaining to be counted are postal votes, and these have been favouring the Liberal Party.
The Liberal Party will therefore be the second largest party in the House of Assembly and retain opposition status.
Earlier, the ABC projected One Nation candidate Robert Roylance would become the next member for the seat of Hammond in the state’s Murraylands.
Two-candidate preferred counts in the first few booths reported today have seen One Nation pick up more than half of preferences from excluded candidates.
The trend is highly unlikely to turn around in the remaining polling places, and Mr Roylance leads on the first preference count, so he is expected to remain ahead of Labor’s Simone Bailey.
The result means One Nation has won at least two seats in parliament, and the party remains ahead in Narungga and MacKillop, which are yet to be resolved.
On Sunday, the ABC called the seat of Ngadjuri for One Nation, with the party’s candidate — Adelaide Plains Council Deputy Mayor David Paton — set to become the new member.
According to the One Nation South Australia website, Mr Roylance is a craft distiller and the operator of a ferry at Walker Flat, between Swan Reach and Mannum on the River Murray.
It says he has also worked as a wood machinist and spent time in the Australian Army Reserve, and has a “strong background in the education sector”.
“One Nation strongly supports a back-to-basics approach with education, with a focus on reversing the decline in literacy and numeracy outcomes,” the website quotes him as saying.
Robert Roylance has won the seat of Hammond for One Nation, the ABC projects. (Supplied: sa.onenation.org.au)
Earlier today, Liberal leader Ashton Hurn was confident her party would win more seats than One Nation.
“The Liberal Party will have more seats in the lower house, that’s for certain,” she said.
“Some of the contests that haven’t yet been called are four-cornered contests, so I can appreciate that it does take a little bit of time.
“I’m just focused on getting on with the job of being a really strong opposition.”
Premier Peter Malinauskas was today asked about the prospect of having two One Nation parliamentary colleagues in the lower house.
He said he would “work with anyone in the parliament who’s willing to put the state’s interests first, regardless of what their political hue is”.
“There will be points of difference and disagreement, absolutely,” he said.
“[But] it’s a significant achievement, and I wish them every success in representing their electorate well. And, you know, over the journey, we’ll hopefully find things that we can agree on and work on together.”