Surprise independent candidate for Fisher, Daniel Woodyatt, has attempted to distance himself from his Labor past.
Woodyatt, who has been supported by Lyn Such, the widow of longstanding local member Bob Such, said today he regretted writing an email to Such in March this year strongly endorsing Premier Jay Weatherill.
In a candidates’ debate on ABC 891 breakfast, Woodyatt said he regretted the email as well as his previous membership of the Labor Party.
He wasn’t the only candidate to have a few awkward moments in today’s debate, with Labor’s Nat Cook endorsing the Government’s unpopular hike to the Emergency Services Levy, and the Liberals’ Heidi Harris ducking and weaving on a range of social issues including gay marriage.
It was put to Woodyatt that his email to Such said that Liberal leader Steven Marshall wasn’t the right man for the job, and that “South Australia deserves a statesman like Jay who gets things done for the electorate rather than cutting and sapping momentum”.
Woodyatt told the ABC’s Matt Abraham and David Bevan that times had changed.
“That’s (written) in a period when the federal Liberal government was about to completely take revenue from the states, which they’ve now done. Now we’ve got Jay sitting in Parliament doing nothing,” he said.
He said Weatherill was no longer a statesman.
“Of course I regret endorsing him,” he said. “I wish I’d never joined the Labor Party. It’s cost me so much at the end of the day. The fact is that Labor is running this state into the ground.”
Woodyatt didn’t recall when he had been a member of the ALP, musing that was “somewhere back in the mid-2000s”.
Labor candidate Cook said the supported the ESL, but was “very happy to advocate” on behalf of people who were suffering from the high cost of living.
“I support the Emergency Services Levy,” she said. “What’s happened is that the discounts that were applied have been removed and they are funding all the other broad government projects. I support that. We need to raise revenue and if the Federal Government reverses those cuts the discounts will be reapplied.”
All candidates were asked their views on a range of social issues advocated by Such, who died in October from a brain tumour.
Harris said that if a vote on gay marriage was put to Parliament she would consult with the community and be guided by the results – not her own views.
“… my personal view is different to what the community would want and as an effective representative of the electorate of Fisher I’d want to consult with the community,” she said.
The by-election will be held on 6 December.
Listen to the debate here.
