SA campaign ends with distinctive pitches

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall and SA-BEST leader Nick Xenophon have made their last pitches to voters.

Steven Marshall (right), Nick Xenophon and Jay Weatherill (left)

South Australia's political leaders prepare for their last full day of campaigning. (AAP)

South Australia's election campaign is drawing to a close with each of the three key players keeping mostly true to form as they made their final pitches to voters.

For Premier Jay Weatherill, who could on Saturday claim a historic fifth term for Labor, that meant making his pitch at the site of his notorious 2017 confrontation with federal minister Josh Frydenberg.

Exactly a year after the exchange with the senator over renewable energy, the garage in West Beach - in suburban Adelaide - attracted even more drama.

That came in the form of a lone protester who interrupted Mr Weatherill's press conference to question his position on drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

"What will you be telling the people of Kangaroo Island?" the man asked, before being led away by security.

Plans for seismic testing for oil and gas within 90km of the island were revealed on Thursday.

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall also chose a garage for the setting of his final push.

The Liberal leader said the car service centre was the kind of business his party would be focusing on if they end up forming government - reiterating their determination to grow the state's economy and create new jobs.

Mr Marshall is hoping things turn out differently on Saturday to the 2014 election when his party failed to form government despite high expectations.

He forged a distinction between then and now by not repeating his infamous gaffe on the eve of the 2014 poll, when he urged people to vote Labor.

"The people of South Australia should unequivocally vote for the Liberal Party - vote for their local Liberal candidate," he told reporters on Friday.

SA-BEST leader Nick Xenophon's final pitch on Friday, at a shopping centre in his electorate of Hartley, was filled with the political stunts he's known for.

The former senator used a bobcat, a musician and a plastic bull to take aim at a campaign by the Australian Hotels Association, which claimed the hotel industry would suffer under SA-BEST's poker machines policy.

"The greatest load of 'bull' has come from the AHA," he told reporters on Friday.

Labor on Friday also revealed SA could soon get another big battery with SIMEC ZEN, the company owned by British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, planning a 120-megawatt facility at Port Augusta, trumping Elon Musk's 100mw battery at Jamestown.


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3 min read
Published 16 March 2018 6:30pm
Source: AAP


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