Leon Bignell the first South Australian House of Assembly Speaker to resign from political party for role in 2024
Leon Bignell, who became Speaker of the House of Assembly in hte South Australian parliament in 2024, after resigning from the Labor party under a constitutional changed voted through in 2021. At right: Bignell showing his commitment to Kangaroo Island as part of Mewson electorate, south of Adeialde, that he held from 2006, defying pevious voting trends.
Images courtesy Leon Bignell
Leon Bignell became the first Speaker of the House of Assembly in the South Australian parliament in 2024 to resign from a political party to take on the role.
Bignell left the Labor party in line with changes passed with the Constitution (Independent Speaker) Amendment Act 2021, constitutionally banning the Speaker being a member of a registered political party, But the Speaker was allowed to rejoin a registered political party during the “relevant election period” from July 1 in the year immediately before a state election.
Since the early 20th Century, the South Australian parliament, like its interstate and federal counterparts, diverged from the Westminster tradition of electing an independent Speaker.
The earliest Speakers of the South Australian House of were chosen by following the Westminster convention of reelecting the Speaker regardless of the party that formed government. This practice changed after the 1912 election when the Liberal Union defeated the Labor Party and the previous Labor Speaker Harry Jackson was controversially not elected again. Instead, the Archibald Peake government nominated one of its own Liberal Union members, Laurence O’Loughlin. Since then, only when no political party had won most seats after an election had the government nominated an independent member to be Speaker to secure a workable majority.
From 1962, there were five independent (non-party aligned) members who have served as Speake, (Tom Stott 1962-66, 1968-70; Ted Connellly 1975-77, Peter Lewis 2002-05, Bob Such 2005-06, Dan Cregan 2021-2).
Dan Cregan, a former Liberal party member for the Adelaide Hills seat of Kavel, stepped down for the speakership to become a member of the Peter Malinauskas Labor government ministry as an independent. He replaced Geoff Brock, another independent member of that ministry who resigned due to ill health but continued to be the member for Stuart, a safe Liberal seat around Spencer Gulf that he won after a boundary change.
Leon “Biggles” Bignell , a former journalist, won the seat of Mawson, covering the Fleurieu Pensinula and Kangaroo Island south of Adelaide, for Labor deafeating Liberal member Robert Brokenshire with a 52.2% two party preferred vote at the 2006 state election, delivering Mawson to Labor for the first time since it was lost in the 1993 post-State Bank-collapse landslide. He increased his two-party-preferred vote to 54.4% at the 2010 election and 55.6% in 2016 against the statewide trend and decades of seat’s voting patterns.
Mawson had been Labor's second most marginal seat. Bignell, aligned with the left faction of the Labor party, also absorbed the Marson seat having its boundaries changed to take in the rural conservative Kangaroo Island. Bignell entered state cabinet in 2013 as the minister for sgriculture, food and fisheries, forests, tourism, recreation and sport and racing under premier Jay Weatherill until the 2018 state election lost by Labor but not "Biggles".
