2002 South Australian state election

← 1997 9 February 2002 (2002-02-09) 2006 →
All 47 seats in theSouth Australian House of Assembly 24 seats were needed for a majority 11 (of the 22) seats in theSouth Australian Legislative Council
First party Second party Third party   LIB NAT Leader Mike Rann Rob Kerin Karlene Maywald Party Labor Liberal National Leader since 5 November 1994 22 October 2001 11 October 1997 Leader's seat Ramsay Frome Chaffey Seats before 21 seats 22 seats 1 seat Seats won 23 20 1 Seat change 2 2 Primary vote 344,559 378,929 13,748 Percentage 36.34 39.97 1.45% Swing 1.18 0.43 0.29 TPP 49.07% 50.93% TPP swing 0.58pp 0.58pp
Results by electorate
Premier before election Rob Kerin Liberal Resulting Premier Mike Rann Labor

State elections were held inSouth Australia on 9 February 2002. All 47 seats in theSouth Australian House of Assembly were up for election, along with half of the 22 seats in theSouth Australian Legislative Council. The incumbentLiberal Party of Australia led byPremier of South AustraliaRob Kerin was defeated by theAustralian Labor Party led byLeader of the OppositionMike Rann. The Labor Party won 23 out of 47 seats, and then secured the one more seat it needed for a majority by gaining the support of independentPeter Lewis.

This was the first election since Labor narrowly lost as opposition in the1997 election, doing much better than most analysts predicted, forcing the Liberals tominority government after their comprehensive loss in the1993 election where Labor were reduced to just ten seats. Coming into the 2002 election, the Liberal Government had faced a number of scandals including theMotorola affair, over which PremierJohn Olsen was forced to resign in October 2001. He was succeeded byRob Kerin, who had less than three months to govern before the election was called.

• Issue of writ: 15 January 2002
• Close of electoral rolls: 22 January 2002
• Close of nominations: Friday 25 January 2002, at noon
• Polling day: 9 February 2002
• Return of writ: On or before 15 March 2002 (actually returned 26 February)

South Australian state election, 9 February 2002[1] House of Assembly << 1997–2006 >>
Enrolled voters		1,045,563
Votes cast		978,569		Turnout	93.59	+1.84
Informal votes		30,537		Informal	3.12	-0.92
Summary of votes by party
Party		Primary votes	%	Swing	Seats	Change
	Liberal	378,929	39.97	-0.43	20	- 2
	Labor	344,559	36.34	+1.18	23	+ 2
	Democrats	71,026	7.49	-8.95	0	0
	Family First	25,025	2.64	New	0	0
	One Nation	22,833	2.41	New	0	0
	Greens	22,332	2.36	+2.21	0	0
	SA First	16,902	1.78	New	0	0
	National	13,748	1.45	-0.29	1	0
	Independent	40,288	4.25	+1.12	3	0
	Other	12,390	1.31	*	0	0
Total		948,032			47
Two-party-preferred
	Labor	465,227	49.07	+0.58
	Liberal	482,805	50.93	–0.58

Independents:Rory McEwen,Bob Such,Peter Lewis

• Members initalics did not recontest their seats.
• Bob Such andPeter Lewis were elected at the 1997 election as Liberals, but quit the party and recontested their seats as Independents and won. Pre-election margins are vs Labor, After margins are against Liberal.
• Mitch Williams was elected at the 1997 election as an Independent, but joined the Liberal party and recontested his seat as a Liberal. Margin is against Independent candidate Bill Hender.

Labor won two seats from the Liberals, the districts ofAdelaide (Jane Lomax-Smith) andColton (Paul Caica). This gave Labor 23 seats, Liberals 20 seats,SA Nationals one seat, and three seats toindependents. To form majority government, a party needed 24 seats out of 47. Most analysts expected Kerin to form a minority government with the support of Nationals MPKarlene Maywald, and the three independents, who were all former Liberal party members.

On 13 February, one of those crossbenchers, former LiberalPeter Lewis, announced that he had signed an agreement with Labor leaderMike Rann to support a Labor Government in exchange for holding aconstitutional convention, making himspeaker of theHouse of Assembly, and concessions for his electorate including the phasing out ofcommercial fishing in the River Murray, prioritising the eradication of thebranched broomrape weed, changing waterrates forirrigation, fast-tracking a feasibility study for aweir andlock atWellington, and improving rural roads. This agreement effectively made Rann premier-elect by one seat.

However, following parliamentary precedent established byDon Dunstan following the1968 election, Kerin refused to resign until Rann and Labor demonstrated that they had majority support on the floor of the House of Assembly. Kerin claimed to be within this rights to take this course, as longstanding precedent in the Westminster system holds that the incumbent premier should have the first opportunity to form a government if no party has a majority.^{[citation needed]}

After three weeks of stalemate, the House of Assembly was called into session several weeks earlier than usual. With Lewis in the speaker's chair, the Kerin Government was defeated on the floor of the House of Assembly on 5 March 2002, after Kerin moved a confidence motion in his own government and lost. Rann then advisedGovernorMarjorie Jackson-Nelson that he couldform a government, which was duly sworn in the following day.

Rann later shored up his government's majority by reaching agreements with crossbenchers Maywald and McEwen, giving them cabinet posts in exchange for their support of the government.

South Australian state election, 9 February 2002[2] Legislative Council << 1997–2006 >>
Enrolled voters		1,045,563
Votes cast		983,567		Turnout	94.1	+1.4
Informal votes		53,105		Informal	5.4	+1.1
Summary of votes by party
Party		Primary votes	%	Swing	Seats won	Seats held
	Liberal	373,102	40.1	+2.3	5	9
	Labor	305,595	32.9	+2.3	4	7
	Democrats	68,317	7.3	–9.4	1	3
	Family First	47,443	4.0	New	1	1
	Greens	25,725	2.8	+1.1	0	0
	One Nation	16,829	1.8	New	0	0
	No Pokies	11,984	1.3	–1.5	0	1
	Voluntary Euthanasia	10,973	1.2	+0.7	0	0
	SA First	9,567	1.0	New	0	1
	HEMP	8,241	0.9	–0.8	0	0
	Grey Power	7,918	0.9	–0.7	0	0
	National	4,412	0.5	–0.5	0	0
	Other	40,356	4.3	*	0	0
Total		930,462			11	22

In theLegislative Council, Liberal won 5 seats (Robert Lawson,Caroline Schaefer,Angus Redford,David Ridgway,Terry Stephens), Labor won 4 seats (Gail Gago,Paul Holloway,Terry Roberts,John Gazzola),Australian Democrats won 1 seat (Sandra Kanck), and the recently formedFamily First party won their first ever seat in an Australian parliament (Andrew Evans).[1]

This left the overall numbers in the Legislative Council at: Liberal 9, Labor 7, Democrats 3, Family First 1, No Pokies 1, and 1 independent (Terry Cameron).

• Rann government

• "Background leading up to the election/Liberals in power".Crikey. Archived fromthe original on 22 August 2004.
• "SA Election - The last domino".Crikey. Archived fromthe original on 22 August 2004.
• "Labor still a chance to take the final state".Crikey. Archived fromthe original on 22 August 2004.
• History of South Australian elections 1857-2006, volume 1: ECSA

General information

• ABC Election Guide - South Australia 2002 Election

Political parties

• Australian Labor Party
• Liberal Party of Australia
• SA Greens
• Australian Democrats
• Family First Party
• The Nationals

• Elections in South Australia
• 2002 elections in Australia
• 2000s in South Australia
• February 2002 in Australia

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022
• Pages using bar box without float left or float right
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from February 2018