The most memorable single image of the South Australian campaign, the one that sums it all up? Mike Rann and his Attorney-General, the certifiably wonderful Michael Atkinson, standing on top of a crushed car.

They’d taken a car — it looked like it may have been a family sedan — to the hydraulic press and crushed it in front of photographers and TV cameras to show what their anti-hoon laws can do now.

It was the macho Premier and his side-kick’s finest moment.

Hubris is insolence stemming from excessive pride. For sheer audacity little can compare with Treasurer Kevin Foley’s statement to Parliament. “You do not have the moral fibre to go back on your promise,” he taunted the Liberals. “I have.”

It is exactly this sort of contempt which has turned voters against Labor despite its solid record on the economy. Every recent poll has shown the ALP more and more in danger. Foley found himself having to apologise “…if the Government had appeared arrogant” and said he was shocked that the polls show a swing away from the ALP and towards the Liberals.

“At times we’ve appeared over-confident,” he conceded.

The result will come down to a handful of votes in a handful of seats and there will be a wide difference between swings in individual electorates.

The biggest swings may be in the safest seats. The strongest anti-Labor backlash could be in Labor electorates which are as safe as houses, and therefore a safe House of Assembly seat for Treasurer Kevin Foley, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson and Environment Minister Jay Weatherill.

The three senior ministers represent electorates in Adelaide’s north-west, scene of shenanigans over a government land swap (a publicly-owned park is being sold to a developer, and the public gets a nearby toxic industrial site in exchange) and where corruption allegations involving other land and property deals are long and loud.

In one of the last decisions made before the Government went into caretaker mode, zoning changes were approved allowing a large shopping development at a racing track in Gawler, the historic settlement where McLeod’s Daughters was filmed. It is now being swallowed by Adelaide’s urban sprawl, and against the wishes of the local council the Labor Party has ticked off on the development.

To help achieve the approval, proponents Gawler and Barossa Jockey Club and Thoroughbred Racing SA employed lobbyist Nick Bolkus and used the planning firm Connor Holmes to prepare the paperwork, including drafting the formal zoning changes.

The State Government has committed $6 million to the Gawler Racecourse redevelopment project.

This same combination of Nick Bolkus as lobbyist and Connor Holmes as planning consultants was also used two weeks before successfully achieving Major Development approval for the equally controversial Buckland Park development.

The decision to approve the Buckland Park development was roundly criticised by several planning experts, including the Planning Institute of Australia.

Ex-Federal Labor MP Bolkus has attracted controversy for acting as a lobbyist for development projects at the same time as being the chair of the SA Labor Party’s major fundraising body SA Progressive Business alongside statutory roles such as the chair of the Stormwater Management Authority.

Connor Holmes lobbied on behalf of developer clients at the same time as leading a consortium employed by the State Department of Planning and Local Government to identify and evaluate land for future housing developments.

“It appears property developers wanting to get controversial development up in our state have hit upon a winning formula,” Greens MLC and planning lawyer Mark Parnell told Crikey yesterday. “The public needs to have confidence in the integrity of the planning system.”

To the west of Gawler is Buckland Park, a declared Major Development. It will be a $2 billion satellite city 32 kilometres from Adelaide, 30,000 inhabitants in 12,000 new homes. It’s a Walker Corporation development; the developer is Lang Walker, the country’s 13th richest citizen. He’s just had one ship built for $50 million and he didn’t need to sell his $30 million, 52-metre cruiser to pay for it — or any of the other half-dozen yachts he owns.

Asked by Crikey if Infrastructure Minister Pat Conlon or Treasurer Kevin Foley had ever been on Lang Walker’s yacht, or if they had ever enjoyed Mr Walker’s hospitality or been the beneficiary of his largesse, Mr Conlon said he had done no more than step on the boat in Sydney Harbour. A quick squiz around, he said, a bit of a sticky. That’s all it was. The Treasurer? Yes, his press secretary said, he’s enjoyed Walker’s hospitality, also in Sydney.

These are complex issues, easily overlooked in the heat of an ordinary election campaign. Both Government and Opposition have spent more time talking about each other’s supposed inactivity or impotence on crime and punishment. “A safer night out,” promised Mr Rann this week when announcing yet more plans to “toughen up criminal laws”, while Isobel Redmond’s Liberal team countered that only they could be trusted to close down drug labs and crack down on hydroponically grown cannabis.

Meanwhile, the Bar Association is deeply worried by another law and order election pledge from Rann, which is to give juries a defendant’s past record in a completely separate cases against the accused.

“Such a proposal would have far-reaching consequences in changing the fundamental basis of our system of justice, namely the presumption of innocence and the principles that evidence upon which a conviction rests must actually and sufficiently prove the guilt of the accused and must not be prejudicial” said Bar Association president Malcolm Blue QC.

“The existing common law proceeds on the basis that it is prejudicial, in every sense of the word, to conclude that someone is guilty of an alleged offence merely because they committed such an offence before.”

And so the campaign rolled on, inexorably and inexplicably. Issues of substance were ignored while issues of substance abuse took precedence. Neither party laid down a strategic plan to fundamentally restore South Australia as an economic and social leader, championing real justice and real equality.

The person with the least chance of winning is David Balaza, the Liberal Party candidate in the seat of Ramsay, which Premier Mike Rann holds with a margin approaching stratospheric proportions. It’s the safest Labor seat in the State. Almost 70 in every 100 voters gave the ALP the nod last election, two-party preferred.

“I’m in this to win,” Mr Balaza told us this week. “Of course it’s been a very, very tight budget. I’ve got to go around myself and re-tie any posters that have been blown down by the wind or,” he added, “damaged in some other way.”

Mr Balaza is planning an election-night party with his volunteers and supporters in Ramsay. “We don’t know how many people will turn up,” he said. “It could be quite small.”

Mr Rann is totally, 100 per cent, absolutely going to win Ramsay. All else is less certain.

Psephologist Malcolm Mackerras believes the Liberal Party will make significant gains, but that the final result will see Labor win 24 of the 47 seats in the House of Assembly, and the Liberals 22. This would be a very narrow majority for the ALP.

Hendrik Gout is editor of The Independent Weekly.