Brock served as an independent cabinet minister in the first two years of the Malinauskas Government but resigned in April 2024 after suffering three heart attacks the year prior.

Asked if he intended to contest the 2026 election, the 74-year-old told InDaily: “Look, health is one of those issues, you never know what’s around the corner.

“I have still a great passion for regional areas. I think there’s got to be a strong voice in there for regions.

“I’ll do the best I can. I don’t care who’s in government, my philosophy is to work with whoever’s got the purse strings to make certain we get the opportunities for our community.

“But certainly, I intend to have another shot at it.

“Again, it’s up to people to make that choice. They may say ‘get rid of Brocky. I don’t want him, somebody else take over’.”

Brock, who would be running in his sixth election, may have to appeal to a host of new communities to hold onto his seat in 2026.

Under a draft proposal released last week by the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission, his regional seat of Stuart would be shifted west to incorporate Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Oodnadatta and Andamooka as well as south into Jamestown, Spalding, Hallett, Farrell Flat and Burra.

The towns, comprising roughly 7000 new voters, would compensate for Brock losing Port Augusta. (The commission wants to “reunite” Port Augusta within one electorate after splitting it across two seats – Giles and Stuart – four years ago.)

The proposed redraw of the seat of Stuart. Image: EDBC.

Brock is no stranger to major redraws of his electorate. The last boundaries commission shifted his stronghold of Port Pirie out of Frome – the seat Brock had represented since 2009 – and into Stuart.

That prompted Brock to leave Frome and contest Stuart at the 2022 state election, where he sensationally knocked off Liberal Deputy Premier Dan van Holst Pellekaan.

“Each election I’ve had a boundary change,” Brock said.

“The last one was a 90 per cent change of electorate. Port Pirie was the only thing I had – everything else was foreign to me.

“I just do the best I can. I get phone calls even now from all over South Australia and I’m not the local member, but people are still coming to me from other parts of the state to ask for my assistance.

“That will continue irrespective of whether I’m in parliament or I’m not in parliament.”

Geoff Brock has been in the South Australian parliament since 2009, serving as an independent minister in both the Weatherill and Malinauskas governments. Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

The boundaries commission has not calculated the ramifications for Brock under the draft redraw, only estimating that the changes would shift Stuart from a notional Labor seat to a Liberal one on a 0.5 per cent margin.

Flinders University academic Josh Sunman, a sessional lecturer in politics, said he does not think Brock would be at risk of losing his seat if he ran for re-election.

But he cautioned that the newly proposed boundaries would be “a lot of work” for the Stuart MP, particularly after he began representing a host of new communities in 2022.

“He has a real problem, I think, in how does he connect with these rural communities, which previously quite a few of them have been in Giles,” Sunman said.

“They’re not necessarily hostile to Geoff Brock, and they’re not necessarily pro-Liberal, but it’s a lot of hard work.

“And with these health issues and at his age, maybe Geoff Brock has to consider what he wants to do in that situation.”

Sunman said if Brock decided not to run again, the Liberal Party would be favoured to win Stuart. The party held the seat from 1997 until Brock’s shock victory in 2022.

Van Holst Pellekaan, the Member for Stuart from 2010 to 2022, is still active in local politics as a councillor for the District Council of Mount Remarkable.

Asked on Wednesday whether he intended to run in Stuart again, the former Deputy Premier told InDaily: “I’ve been clear with everyone who’s asked me for over a year now that I don’t intend to run again.”

Former Deputy Premier Dan van Holst Pellekaan was the Member for Stuart from 2010 to 2022. Photo: Kelly Barnes/AAP

Support for Port Augusta reunification

In 2020, Port Augusta was divided between Giles and Stuart to address declining population numbers in the Upper Spencer Gulf, which risked leaving these seats below the electorate size “quota” established by the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission.

Labor MP for Giles Eddie Hughes represents the western side of Port Augusta. The current boundaries commission wants to expand his seat to represent all of Port Augusta but shift out the APY Lands, Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Oodnadatta and Andamooka.

“A lot of people in Port Augusta would… welcome the fact that Port Augusta is no longer split,” Hughes said of the draft decision.

“Even though they were ably represented by two MPs… a lot of people did feel that Port Augusta should not be split in two.”

South Australia’s current regional electoral map spreads Port Augusta across Giles and Stuart. Image: EDBC

The new regional boundaries proposed for 2026 with Giles significantly shrunk but incorporating all of Port August. Image: EDBC

The proposed changes to Giles, while significant geographically, only shrink Hughes’s margin over the Liberal Party from 21.1 per cent to 17.4 per cent, meaning his seat would remain among Labor’s safest in 2026.

Hughes said he would like to have retained Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Andamooka and the APY Lands but “at the end of the day, the boundaries commission has got a difficult job to do”.

“I don’t envy the task of ensuring that there’s one vote one value,” he said.

Brock also said Port Augusta should never have been split into two and it was good to see it back under one electorate in the draft redraw.

The boundaries commission will take another round of written and oral submissions from the political parties and MPs before gazetting its final electoral map in November 2024.