by Shane Sody

SA Labor has snubbed a series of Park Lands questions posed to the major candidates for a by-election next week in the inner suburban seat of Dunstan.

With pre-poll voting already under way, Labor candidate Cressida O’Hanlon answered only one of the six Park Lands questions that we put to Labor, Liberal and Green candidates.

Liberal candidate Anna Finizio, and Green candidate Katie McCusker gave thorough responses to each of our six questions. However SA Labor’s candidate chose to ignore the questions. Ms O’Hanlon’s response mostly quoted previously-debunked State Government talking points, engaging on the substance of only one of our six questions.

If you are in the Dunstan electorate, you might like to check (before polling day) on how each of these three main candidates responded to the six questions about your Adelaide Park Lands.

We have put their responses side-by-side to help you compare. (PDF, 6 pages, 521 Kb)

Each of the responses has been edited (a) for brevity, and (b) to confine the response only to matters directly relevant to each question.

If you would prefer to read each candidate’s full response, we have provided them here:

• Anna Finizio (Liberal party) (PDF, 7 pages, 328 Kb)

• Katie McCusker (The Greens) (PDF, 4 pages, 275 Kb)

• Cressida O’Hanlon (SA Labor) (PDF, 3 pages, 118 Kb)

Where necessary, we have added fact checking at the end of claims made in these responses.

Other candidates?

There are two other, minor party candidates contesting this by-election:

• Frankie Bray of the Animal Justice Party; and

• Nicole Hussey of the Australian Family Party

We did not put the same Park Lands questions to these two candidates.

Realistically, these candidates have no prospect of winning although of course, their respective preferences to the other candidates may affect the outcome.