In general thus far, Steven Marshall has campaigned as he has governed.

Low-key, content to take a back-seat to others, wary of promising too much.

‘Underpromise and overdeliver’ has long been his mantra.

And thus far, he’s certainly nailed at least half the brief.

It seemed counterintuitive to some observers that SA’s first Liberal administration in 16 years was content to play the long game.

That was defined by New Zealand political guru Wayne Eagleson, who was briefly retained to advise the incoming Marshall Government, telling them that public sector reform should be “done over three terms rather than a ‘big bang’”.

The thing about that, of course, is that you actually need to win the three terms.

Some election defeats have long legacies.

When John Hewson choked on a birthday cake (not literally) before losing the ’93 contest having outlined a detailed economic blueprint, it signalled the end of the big target strategy for Oppositions.

Likewise, Campbell Newman’s brief reign in Queensland proved a template of what not to do for incoming conservative state governments: taking a bulldozer to the public sector might play well with the Liberal base, but not so well with people that aren’t already going to automatically vote for you anyway.

The Newman folly was at the forefront of the minds of incoming Marshall Government ministers, wary of rocking the proverbial boat and being left all at sea so early in the honeymoon.

But there is another recent Liberal administration they should also have been wary of emulating: the one-term Victorian government of Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine, which meandered through its four years in office without much in the way of major scandal but also without much in the way or anything else either.

A post-defeat review by ex-federal Liberal MP David Kemp makes for interesting reading for those familiar with recent SA politics.

It detailed a litany of failings: a lack of debate within the government, with MPs feeling subservient to an inner coterie of staff; a lack of communications between the senior ministry and the party’s backbench, an ill-judged focus on a single infrastructure commitment, a communications strategy that favoured a sole News Corp partner over the broader media and placed “excessive reliance on communications through media releases, rather than the development of effective relations with journalists” and the unhelpful distraction of factional infighting culminating in the defection of a sitting MP to the crossbench.

If the state Libs were wary of becoming the next cautionary tale a la Baillieu/Napthine, they sure didn’t heed many of the lessons.

And thus, a weekend Newspoll putting Labor on 53 per cent of the two-party vote in SA, following an Australia Institute poll also giving the ALP a lead, would have sent shockwaves through the Liberal camp.

For a Government that until just a few months ago was widely considered to be leading a world-class pandemic response, the evaporation of goodwill is palpable.

Clearly the border re-opening and subsequent Omicron wave has played the significant part in that, throwing away what was the Government’s trump hand in COVID management.

But the apparent collapse in goodwill might not have been so stark if the Liberals had another story to tell.

Marshall’s Government spent its first year in office effectively getting the feet under the desk, taking months to make significant appointments while it basked in the afterglow of its historic election win.

Its second year was largely derailed by a stoush with its own political base over land tax, with months of damaging infighting finally resolved by adapting what was to be a simple savings measure into a net budget cost.

Presumably the Liberals were primed to use their third and fourth years in office establishing the basis of a legacy on which to campaign, but a global pandemic proved otherwise. As Harold Macmillan was fond of saying: “Events dear boy, events!”

In some ways though, COVID buttressed the Government against the fallout from other matters that would have spelled crisis for previous administrations.

Multiple ministerial resignations, including that of the deputy premier, incumbent MPs quitting to contest as independents, the eventual evaporation altogether of the Government’s hard-won majority: all of these seismic events seemed to bounce harmlessly off the COVID cushion that enveloped the Marshall premiership.

But now the Premier is seeking re-election and, rather than overpromise and underdeliver, he is content to stand on his record.

The problem is, it’s not clear what that is.

Yes, unemployment is historically low, and the Government is boasting an end to the ‘brain drain’ and a faster-growing economy.

It sounds like a good story to tell, but Marshall is yet to point to specific policy initiatives to credit for the ‘uptick’ – as he is fond of calling such things.

Certainly, it’s arguable that SA’s stabilised population is a factor of having closed our borders and maintaining a relatively high standard of living during the two years of pandemic life, with experts unconvinced about claims the proverbial ‘brain drain’ had been otherwise stalled.

And while SA’s jobless figures recently hit a historic low, within a month they had bounced back to the nation’s highest – a sign perhaps that we are witnessing a national trend rather than a local miracle.

And while enthusing about the state of the economy, no-one has yet pointed out the eye-watering debt on which recent budget solutions have been predicated.

It’s been an odd campaign for Marshall. It kicked off, somewhat strangely, with a media conference to announce a defence maintenance project – funding for which had already been approved by cabinet.

Not an election pledge, then – just something the Government is already doing.

The Premier took a back seat to his federal colleague Simon Birmingham, who effectively ran the media conference, and – despite being whisked away from the Q&A to visit the Governor to kickstart the campaign proper – he didn’t even mention the forthcoming election until he was asked about it by reporters.

The general vibe seemed to be: yes, we know there’s an election around the corner, but let’s not get too caught up about it all, shall we?

In contrast, Labor leader Peter Malinauskas has run a traditional presidential-style campaign, complete with a big-ticket campaign launch for the party faithful and daily policy reveals, focussed in recent days exclusively on health.

Despite the lack of clarity around exactly what he’s doing and how he’ll pay for it – something the Government is ever more determined to exploit – the campaign pitch sits starkly alongside Marshall’s scattergun approach, which seems to be trying to play to the “world’s most liveable city” conceit.

Thus, on the weekend we got multi-million dollar commitments from Labor for new ambulance operations and staff, while the Government countered with plans to build new zoo enclosures and make walking trails more visitor-friendly.

In the end, of course, it could all be of little consequence.

Marshall would be acutely aware that he was considered to have run a winning campaign back in 2014, when he rode a statewide surge to a strong two-party result – that failed to translate into enough seats to win power.

By contrast, his 2018 campaign hardly set the world aflame, but the Liberals diligently (and quietly) focussed relentlessly on the seats it needed to win.

While its macro, mainstream media campaign this time around might lack focus, if the Libs have learned anything at all about winning elections, they’ll only care about sandbagging their vulnerable seats that Labor needs to claim to win government.

The Liberal faithful will certainly be hoping this is the case.

For if not, there’s another state government they will be acutely aware of: the one-term Tonkin administration, which ended a decade of Labor rule in SA only to usher in another within three years.

After finally winning power after 16 years in the wilderness, to be going back there so soon would be a bitter legacy for the Marshall Government.

Particularly with so little else to show for it.

Tom Richardson is a senior reporter at InDaily.