A bruising week for Labor after an email blunder, but the blowtorch is back on the Liberals after a candidate's comments

This may have been the most bruising week the South Australian Labor government has faced in its four years in office.

A botched attempt to "background" journalists about a case study who had spoken publicly about a difficult health system experience with her dying partner left the Premier and Health Minister facing questions for days about whether the government had tried to publicly discredit a grieving widow.

Days of negative headlines followed, across media outlets and Health Minister Chris Picton faced calls to resign.

For perhaps the first time since the 2022 election, Labor was in serious damage control over what it admitted was a major error of judgement — apologising repeatedly in an attempt to make the problem go away.

For an opposition on the brink, languishing in third spot in the polls and quickly running out of time to turn things around, Labor's scandal looked like the shot-in-the-arm the Liberals so desperately needed.

Yet, somehow, it was the Liberals in damage control by the end of the week.

Heat back on Liberals

Contentious comments made by a candidate in an unwinnable seat — leading to either his resignation or disendorsement — and shifted the blowtorch back on the Liberals.

According to the now-former Liberal candidate for Wright, Islam is "poisonous and wrong" the "trans agenda" is "insanity", feminism are "demonic" and "same-sex marriage isn't real".

The comments were made by Carston Woodhouse, also a contract employee at Liberal HQ, on the American evangelical Christian podcast ElijahFire.

They weren't hard to find, for anyone who did some basic Googling.

A quick search and then a listen uncovered remarks that were inevitably going to pose awkward questions for Liberal Leader Ashton Hurn about whether she agreed with them.

Either the party didn't do the most cursory of background checks before endorsing Mr Woodhouse, or it did and they picked him anyway.

When the inevitable awkward questions came at Ms Hurn, initially she tried to bat them away without giving Mr Woodhouse the flick.

"I do not share those views at all," she said.

Twenty four hours later, after the ABC had exclusively revealed the "poisonous" comment about Islam and his remarks about transgender people, the party finally conceded the situation was untenable.

Mr Woodhouse's candidacy was over, although his contract at Liberal HQ continues.

Even the end of his candidacy, though, wasn't straightforward.

For one, Ms Hurn wouldn't say whether Mr Woodhouse had been dumped or resigned of his own accord.

And while Ms Hurn was in Adelaide trying to make the story go away, 12 hours up the highway in Canberra, conservative Liberal Senator Alex Antic unleashed.

"This is the party in this country which apparently stands for freedom of thought, worship, speech and association," he told the Senate.

What a difference a few days make.

What was one of South Australian Labor's most difficult weeks in years ended with the spotlight on the opposition and the Liberals fighting amongst themselves.

It's hard to imagine how a week that was going so well for the Liberals could have derailed much worse than it did.

No surprises, then, that Ms Hurn came out swinging in the first televised leaders debate on Friday afternoon — trading blows with Mr Malinauskas during what was an at-times fierce and heated one-hour discussion.

With the Liberals quickly running out of runway to put the spotlight back on Labor and prosecute a successful argument to save their political skin, it was always going to be a tense affair.

Whether it can sway voters — or whether the public has already made up its mind — we'll find out next Saturday.