Do we like Peter Malinauskas?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A record that's decent on migrants and Pride funding, held back by one contested call on a writer's invitation and some tough protest penalties.
Peter Malinauskas is South Australia's Premier, and he got there the Labor right way: through the 'shoppies' union, where he was state secretary of the SDA before taking the party's leadership in 2018. He's now a hugely popular Premier. Late-August 2026 polling had him on a net personal rating of plus 25 and well ahead as preferred premier, with Labor leading One Nation on two-party-preferred.
The story that dogs him is Adelaide Writers' Week. In January 2026 Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah was dropped from the lineup, authors left in droves and the Premier was dragged into it. He said he backed the board's independence but would not support rhetoric that 'inflames hate speech'. Abdel-Fattah alleged he had linked her to the Bondi attack. When the new board apologised and re-invited her, he said, 'Other people have changed their opinions but not me.'
Abdel-Fattah's lawyers sent two concerns notices under the Defamation Act in January, alleging he called her 'antisemetic and hateful'. In July she dropped the case, saying suing a sitting premier carried 'prohibitive cost and risk'. Malinauskas said he wasn't gloating. Freedom of Information documents reported by InDaily showed the festival board removed her because it feared government intervention, and she says they 'exposed' him. He's told voters 'My job isn't to quell division.'
On the harm test, the record is mixed but leans right side up. He has argued hard for skilled migration, telling a business lunch in February that he wouldn't wrap himself in a flag and then oppose migrants doing essential work. He had a pointed line for One Nation voters about who would care for them at 90. His September speech called cutting migration to chase populists 'appeasement'. His government also committed $80,000 over four years to Adelaide's Pride March.
The mixed side: in 2023 his government passed a law lifting the maximum penalty for obstructing a public place from $750 to $50,000 or three months' jail. The Human Rights Law Centre and SA Unions criticised it. He called it a win for common sense and said it balanced the right to protest with other people's everyday lives. On abortion, Labor allows a conscience vote. In June 2026 he voted for a late-term bill that the lower house rejected, after voting to decriminalise abortion in 2021.
On the good-person side there's one court matter worth knowing. Former MP Annabel Digance, who had been charged with blackmail over a 2020 meeting with him before the charges were dropped, sued for $2.3 million, alleging malicious prosecution. In March 2026 the Supreme Court dismissed the claim. The judge found an MP can't direct police, and that helping them as a complainant doesn't make someone the prosecutor. That's a clean result for him, and nothing in what we found suggests he mistreats staff or colleagues.