InDaily can reveal the ALP’s 2014 candidate for the Riverland seat of Chaffey will present to the panel, making the ballot at least a three-way contest against union powerbroker Peter Malinauskas and long-time Labor member Quentin Black.

Malinauskas’s name will be rubber-stamped, though, with both the party’s Right and Left faction falling in behind a man many have described as a “leader-in-waiting”.

But Mahanbir Singh Grewal, who stood for Labor in the Liberals’ third-safest seat, told InDaily he was standing to air his concerns about the party’s lack of engagement in regional SA and as a protest against the hegemony of the Left and Right.

Mahanbir Singh Grewal. Photo: SA Labor website.

“I used to play hockey at a reasonable level (and) I scored more goals because I had the understanding of a centre forward … if you don’t have a centre forward you’re not going to score any goals,” he explained by way of analogy.

“You must have the centre … you need a centre where you don’t have to be left and right, depending on the issue.”

Grewal said he accepted that Malinauskas had the nomination sewn up.

“That’s fine, I’m just making a point,” he said.

“This is one good way to bring it out to both left and right, otherwise when will I get a chance to say this? It’s an opportunity to air my views (forged) from my political experience in the 2014 election.”

Grewal said when he and his campaign team visited polling stations in Chaffey – which was held by Rann cabinet minister and Nationals MP Karlene Maywald before Liberal Tim Whetstone won it back in 2010 – “people were saying ‘How come you never came last time’?”

“There are people who want to support Labor, but if you don’t go and meet them regularly you’re not passing the message,” Grewal said.

“We have to address those issues, otherwise we’re just always waiting on the city (votes) and we’ll always win by one or two (seats).

“All the regions, they’re basically all Liberal.”

Grewal said he offered to become branch secretary in Chaffey when the position became vacant but was rebuffed, and was “disgusted” when the party “didn’t even send me notice of the AGM”.

He subsequently moved back to Port Augusta where his family owns the Standpipe Golf Motor Inn.

But Grewal says his candidacy is not a critique of Malinauskas, the right-faction heavyweight hand-picked by Premier Jay Weatherill for the Upper House vacancy, who is likely to transition to the House of Assembly at the 2018 election.

“He’s very able, there’s no doubt … I’m not challenging him, I’m just saying that I want to bring out a point,” Grewal said.

“There’s some basic issues, looking at Labor long-term, that we have to address.”

InDaily revealed yesterday that clinical psychologist and long-time parliamentary aspirant Dr Quentin Black would also stand for Finnigan’s casual vacancy.

Black ran twice in the north-eastern suburbs seat of Hartley, in 1997 as an unaligned candidate and in 2002 for the Right.

The seat’s preselection was subsequently traded to the Left in a factional deal that enabled Grace Portolesi to enter parliament in 2006.