Sa Politics

An Underbelly-style TV dramatisation of NSW politics would most certainly need to be broadcast after the watershed. (See various examples here and here.) It has been tried to an extent with Victoria in the show Tangle but given the general civility of that state’s politics in contrast to the rest of the country the outcome was predictably beige.

Enter South Australia, where the dalliances are G-rated and when a guy wants to mix it with the Premier he goes at him with a rolled-up wine magazine. This weekend they were at it again in an episode involving political intrigue, a date gone awry, glamorous blondes, and a magnificent expletive-laden spray by the state Treasurer who just months ago lamented: “I wish at times that I did not portray myself as an arrogant person.”

The Australian reports on it in detail today but the potted version is as follows: Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond had a date with the newly-single Attorney-General John Rau. She showed up, but he didn’t. She was escorted to a box where she found Rau enjoying the company of a blonde 20-something who it seems was set up for the AG by the Treasurer, Kevin Foley. Everyone was terribly embarrassed and later when Foley, who is Acting Premier, was snapped by photographers leaving a party he called their newspaper to tell the duty editor: “You are a c . . ., you’re all c . . . s, the paper is a f . . king c . . .”.

Continue reading "SA stakes its claim as the Melrose Place of politics" »

VOTERS are a fickle lot. The extent of their capriciousness can be told with the tale of two governments: Mike Rann’s generally competent Labor administration in South Australia, which is facing possible defeat today, and that crazy sideshow act in NSW now under the care of a new ringleader, a likable American-born woman called Kristina Keneally, who is harnessing public sympathy if not pity as the basis for an improbable political comeback.

Rann has presided over a state where job growth has surged and investment has boomed. The one-time basket case of the national economy, which younger people (like me) were keen to flee in the backdraft of the State Bank collapse 15 years ago, now finds itself in the once-unimaginable position of having the lowest level of unemployment in Australia.

Continue reading "Tale of two premiers plays to mixed reviews" »

It is hard to believe that not one South Australian Federal Liberal wouldn’t have tapped Malcolm Turnbull on the shoulder late last week and uttered two cautionary words – “Remember Marty”.

Where was SA’s Christopher Pyne or Nick Minchin? Where was Turnbull adviser, Adelaide’s Chris Kenny, in the lead up to the fake email affair and Malcolm’s call for the Prime Minister to resign?

Last week’s email attack in Canberra came just days after I read into Hansard an extraordinary apology from South Australian Liberal Leader, Martin Hamilton-Smith.

Continue reading "Dodgy Lib documents are deja vu all over again" »