The path to power was carved early for South Australia's new Premier Peter Malinauskas.
For anyone connected to the SA Labor movement, his ascension to the state's top job after Saturday's state election hasn't come as a surprise.
In fact, it's been the expectation for more than a decade.
Peter Malinauskas has been spoken about within Labor ranks as a future Premier – even a future Prime Minister – since the former union boss was in his twenties.
But who is Peter Malinauskas, and what kind of leader will he be?
From Woolies worker to union boss
Peter Malinauskas is the grandson of Lithuanian and Hungarian refugees, who fled Europe for Australia after World War II.
He was educated at the prestigious Mercedes College, a Catholic school in Adelaide's eastern suburbs, where he was named school captain in year 12.
The keen footballer worked at a Woolworths in Mitcham and went on to study commerce at the University of Adelaide.
Ambitious and charismatic, his future in politics was all but confirmed when he succeeded the so-called godfather of SA Labor's right faction, Don Farrell, as secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA).
He was later elected to the Labor Party's National Executive – all this by the time he was 30.
The path to power
The power promised came quickly and smoothly.
Mr Malinauskas was instrumental in SA Labor's 2011 leadership spill, often referred to as the "faceless man" who tapped Mike Rann on the shoulder to inform him he had lost the support of the party to Jay Weatherill.
He joined the Legislative Council at the end of 2015 through a vacancy left by disgraced former police minister Bernard Finnigan, and was quickly promoted to cabinet.
The next state election saw Mr Malinauskas moved into the ultra-safe Lower House seat of Croydon, the next step towards his eventual leadership.
He took the helm when the Liberal Party won government in 2018, and Jay Weatherill resigned.
The succession plan developed many years before had been fulfilled.
Four years to do the unthinkable
Peter Malinauskas, like any other opposition leader, presumably spent his first two years developing a strategy for the 2022 election, and the challenging task of toppling a first-term government.
But once the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in South Australia, he was unceremoniously benched.
SA Labor spent 2020, and a large part of 2021, offering almost unconditional support to the Marshall Liberal Government, as it responded to outbreaks and navigated restrictions and lockdowns.
Rather than offering up hyper-critical media grabs, his party tried to gain political ground on issues like ambulance ramping, child protection and unemployment.
It saw there was no appetite for political bickering in a crisis.
With an election approaching, something as basic as name recognition could have been a major issue.
(A certain photograph at a swimming centre may have helped that cause in recent weeks).
But that time on the sidelines meant Labor had ample time to prepare despairing paramedics for press conferences, "basketball stadium" spin, and even a morning running program.
There were hiccups along the way, including a sexist gibe from the Labor leader himself about a pack of Young Liberal joggers being "girls".
That aside, the Marshall Liberal Government's campaign did not keep up.
The weight of expectation
Years of expectation now weigh heavily on Peter Malinauskas.
The married father-of-three has sold – and voters have bought – a vision for the state's post-pandemic future.
Mr Malinauskas describes himself as a business friendly Labor leader, still focused on his roots in shop trading hours and fair pay.
Speaking on the ABC tonight, Labor's Tom Koutsantonis said he "couldn't be prouder of Peter" and described him as a "remarkable individual".
"I have known him for a long, long time and I remember when Don Farrell first introduced me to Peter, everyone knew that this was a special young man, and he hasn't let anyone down," he said.
Mr Koutsantonis said Mr Malinauskas will run a "very collegiate" cabinet.
"He is a strong individual who is considered in the way he thinks about things," he said.
Mr Malinauskas' "vision" also includes "fixing the ambulance ramping crisis" – or, finding a way to vastly reduce an increasingly public, complex and devastating problem for the state's health system.
It is a problem that started, and worsened, under the most recent Labor government, as well as under Steven Marshall's watch.
Mr Malinauskas has promised he will not lead a government focused on the next four years, but on the next generation of South Australians.
Whether he will be a leader remembered by generations to come could be a trickier path to navigate than the one he took to power.
