'I actually panicked': Liberals apologise for mistakenly waking people up with robocalls at dawn - because they confused AM for PM
- Many South Australian's woke at 6am to a robocall from the SA government
- The call was intended for 6pm and asked if the government was doing a good job
- The Liberal Party has since apologised and said no tax payer money was used
The Liberal Party has apologised after households were woken up by early morning robocalls that went out by mistake.
The survey calls went out across a number of suburbs in South Australia between 6.15 and 7.15 on Wednesday morning instead of on Tuesday night.
After being woken up, people were played a message asking if 'South Australia is generally heading in the right direction or do you think it is seriously heading in the wrong direction?'
The survey calls went out across a number of suburbs in South Australia between 6.15 and 7.15 on Wednesday morning instead of on Tuesday night
The government initially denied blame for the situation with staff from Premier Steven Marshall's office claiming the robocalls were not commissioned by the sitting government, according to the ABC.
One woman raised doubts about this claim after listening to the entire message.
'It says thank you for your time. This was put together by the Steven Marshall State Government and thank you for your support,' she told ABC Radio Adelaide.
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Soon after, the Liberal Party sent out an apology to those woken up early by the surveys.
'I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience or annoyance caused by these early morning survey calls to households,' state director Sascha Meldrum said in a statement.
Treasurer Rob Lucas told reporters on Wednesday that no taxpayer money was spent on the calls.
'Without knowing, I suspect that someone's backside is going to get a boot,' he said.
Mr Lucas said the robocall was a regular survey and he believed there had been a mistake.
The Liberal Party has since apologised for the robocalls after Premier Steven Marshall's (pictured) office initially claimed they had nothing to do with the issue
'No sensible person would be commissioning polling or robocalling at 6am in the morning,' he said.
'It's only guaranteed to irritate people.'
Frustrated people expressed their annoyance at being woken up early.
'I wasn't too thrilled and I actually panicked a bit thinking, "Oh my God, what's happened to someone?"' Linda said.
John was in the shower at the time and also feared the worst when he heard the phone ring.
'Normally that indicates something bad is happening. It's very rare that, that rings,' he said.
'I picked it up and it was an automatic robot message,' he said, before he hung up.
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