Pina coladas before the last-ditch campaign
TOM RICHARDSON: Apparently, the worst crime a politician can perpetrate is to go on holidays.
It’s certainly never a good look, particularly when the proverbial is hitting the fan. Which, in politics, it usually is.
Just ask those of us who cover it for a living, who live in fear of having a few days away when all hell breaks loose (the record for poor timing must still go to the former colleague who hadn’t even reached the airport for a long-awaited world sojourn when Mike Rann was tapped on the shoulder by party powerbrokers).
Isobel Redmond was criticised more than once for her propensity to go AWOL at times when political pragmatism dictated she should be leading from the front, so she may have allowed herself some wry glee when Jay Weatherill came in for his own kicking this week.
You see, having released the Debelle report, taken questions on its contents, endured a week of parliamentary scrutiny and overseen various reforms being put in train in line with its recommendations, Weatherill took advantage of school holidays to have one last week off with his own primary-school-aged kids before election fever reaches its zenith.
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Or, as the Opposition would have it, he jetted off to sun himself on a beach in Queensland. With a Pina Colada. Definitely with a Pina Colada. I’m not sure whether the Premier’s cocktail of choice was ever confirmed, but the Opposition was adamant it was of the rum, coconut and pineapple variety.
And while his bibulous peccadilloes may be no concern of ours, the vibe of the Liberal critique was clear: Weatherill was fiddling while Rome burned.
Sure, perception can be paramount in politics, and ducking off for some R&R while the Government you lead is lurching through a crisis of competence is perhaps not the first rule in the PR101 playbook.
It is of little practical consequence though; parliament is not sitting, the education department is under its umpteenth independent review and most of Debelle’s recommendations are being fast-tracked. But in the end, Weatherill’s greatest enemy this week wasn’t his travel agent, nor the Opposition, but a plucky and wild-eyed mother and one-time school governing councillor, a central figure in the Debelle report.
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Danyse Soester chased down Weatherill (and, in his absence, his colleagues) with the determined zeal of Michelle Chantelois haunting Mike Rann during the last election campaign. Soester’s motives may be more worthy, but I fear her zeal may be similarly misplaced. Having fought the battle against the bureaucracy for transparency over its child protection processes, she now evidently intends to continue to fight until those implicated by Debelle are held to account, which presumably means sacked. She also wants an independent Education Ombudsman, which Weatherill has already ruled out.
Her one-woman campaign — encouraged, if not aided and abetted, by the Opposition– added to an aura of chaos around the Government that we haven’t seen since my former colleague went on holiday and Rann got moved aside.
Personally I hope Weatherill’s enjoyed his time away, which isn’t easy when you know big things are happening on your patch in your absence. After all, he’ll have plenty to do on his return, not least attempting to win an unlikely re-election (which is, after all, what his party put him there to do). To acknowledge it won’t be easy is a fairly major understatement.
While the State Government’s negotiations with Holden are on ice pending a new deal with the Commonwealth (with various reports suggesting some hefty ambit claims being bandied around), the flailing auto giant’s teetering local fortunes remain a looming disaster for Labor, with Weatherill long trumpeted his role in “saving” the carmaker early last year.
In the wake of that deal’s failure, and Ford’s scheduled exit, I sense public enthusiasm for endless taxpayer charity waning. Were it not for the flow-on effects to suppliers and assorted businesses around the already-marginalised northern suburbs, we would surely have reached the point where Steven Marshall’s oft-mentioned cost-benefit analysis fails to stack up.
But, as with everything in politics, perception will play its part. In this case, that of not wanting to be the Government that killed South Australia’s car industry. With mining and defence on the wane, Weatherill is fast running out of feathers in his cap. So one hopes he returns refreshed from his brief getaway, Pina Coladas or no.
Presumably his next holiday won’t be till after March next year. It may be a long one.
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