Labor has pivoted from health to housing. How will SA voters respond?

In 2022, it was "Labor will fix the ramping crisis".

Now, it's "Labor will fix the housing crisis".

The latter won't be emblazoned on corflutes next year like its ramping predecessor — for one, cardboard election posters are now banned in South Australia, and two, it's not an official Labor Party slogan — but it does appear to be the subtext of the Malinauskas government's last 72 hours of announcements.

On Saturday, Premier Peter Malinauskas used his keynote address at the Labor Party's state convention to reveal that his government, if re-elected, would underwrite up to $500 million in apartment construction.

He backed it up on Monday, with a deregulation policy to make it easier for developers to build taller apartments in Adelaide's CBD.

The policies follow a $1.5 billion "Housing Roadmap" announced last year for new water and wastewater infrastructure and the government's stamp duty exemption for first home buyers building a new house.

If Labor's 2022 campaign was all about ambulance patients locked out of hospitals, then 2026 is all about young people locked out of home ownership.

"If you live in the northern suburbs and you want a big block so your kids can play in the backyard, you deserve that opportunity," Mr Malinauskas told the Labor faithful.

"If you're a young professional and you want to get a start with an affordable apartment in our CBD, you deserve that opportunity too.

"We have a housing agenda that isn't just making a difference, but that is going to continue to deliver the outcomes and the aspirations that the people in our state deserve."

A shift in messaging

The promise to fix the ramping crisis has never been fulfilled, with the state government experiencing record levels in July this year.

In that month alone, patients spent 5,866 hours ramped in ambulances outside public hospitals.

The word ramping did not rate a mention in the Premier's Saturday speech, although Labor denied it was shying away it.

The Premier said the government had "been busy" with health.

"We haven't achieved all of our objectives, but we have achieved a lot indeed," he said, pointing to 330 extra hospital beds "already delivered", 2,974 health workers hired and 350 new ambulances officers.

"That has resulted in ambulances rolling up on time in South Australia in a way that we haven't seen for years."

After his spiel on health, the Premier proceeded to outline the government's initiatives on transport, the environment, education, infrastructure and, in greatest length, housing.

So, will voters accept the shift in emphasis?

There's evidence to suggest they will.

The 2022 election, as Labor insiders note, happened against the backdrop of COVID and heightened voter anxieties about health.

Now, it appears that the landscape has changed, with cost of living and housing top of voters' minds.

When the Malinauskas government took office, the median house price in metropolitan Adelaide was $650,000, according to valuer-general data.

It's now $877,000.

Polling outfit DemosAU last week released a poll of 1,006 South Australian voters who were asked, "what is the biggest issue facing South Australia today?"

The number one response was cost of living (32 per cent) followed by housing (22 per cent) — two issues which are not mutually exclusive.

Health and hospitals came in third at only 13 per cent.

As one Labor source said of the party's focus on housing, "The politics match the policy."

The DemosAU poll — which was commissioned by corporate affairs firm Ace Strategies and has a margin of error of 3.9 per cent — also put Labor on a two-party-preferred lead of 66 per cent to 34 per cent, a result that would wipe the Liberal Party out of metropolitan Adelaide.

If there's evidence voters are preparing to punish Labor on health, then it's yet to materialise.

Housing will be hard

But there are no guarantees that Labor will have more success with housing than it has with "fixing the ramping crisis". 

Just like hospital beds, bringing online new housing developments can take a long time.

For example, in February 2023, the government announced it was rezoning four large parcels of land in Adelaide's southern and northern suburbs to make way for around 24,000 new homes.

The first of those homes is still not due for construction until 2026, and some of those sites — particularly Dry Creek and Sellicks Beach — are facing complex environmental and remediation problems.

And just as horror stories of patients being left stranded waiting for an ambulance marred the final days of the former Marshall Liberal government, housing horror stories can also hit the front pages.

Over the weekend, the Liberal Party highlighted the case of an Adelaide mum who said she became ill almost immediately after moving into a contaminated Housing Trust property in West Beach.

She criticised the Housing Trust for not telling her beforehand and maintaining that the house had been cleaned.

If the government chooses to raise the campaign stakes on housing, it'll also face more regular scrutiny on cases like this.

But also, given the party's current polling, it may be as safe as houses, whatever path it takes.