Richardson: The crumbling empire
It was like game day.
Arriving at Adelaide Oval around 5.30am, I sat in a veritable traffic jam waiting to turn into the makeshift car park in the northern park lands. Giving up, I did a U-turn, instead idling to a halt on Pennington Terrace, a street on which I lived for five years as a kid.
Walking down to the northern mound, I brushed shoulders with hordes descending on the Oval from all directions. Just as on game day, there was a tribal veneer to their uniform colours, although instead of guernseys and scarves they were decked out in vests of fluorescent orange and gold. At any one time there are more than 900 workers on site. By 6.30am the attendant at the gate was turning vehicles away from the northern car park. The workers pay $5 a day to park there for the privilege of working on the oval, and it was already full.
On this day, I was due for a live cross for Nine’s Today Show about union safety concerns as the Oval redevelopment project enters its end-game; effectively brinkmanship by the CFMEU, flexing its industrial muscle, but a reminder nonetheless that meeting the project deadline is an ominous task. As union secretary Aaron Cartledge explains it, “to deliver this project on schedule, the size of the stadium that they’re building, would be the first time around the world that a project’s done at this speed”. The pressure is intense.
Contractor Lend Lease (formerly Baulderstone) stands to make a $5 million bonus if it meets its deadlines ($2.5 million each for the Ashes and round one of the AFL season). The union doesn’t need a long memory to recall the terrible workplace tragedies at the Adelaide desalination plant. To be clear, there have been no instances raised of corners being cut or unseemly haste in the building project at the Oval, and Lend Lease is adamant safety remains its primary priority, but as the completion date looms and the pace quickens, the union has put the contractor on notice that it’s keeping a close eye on proceedings.
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The builder may be working towards a seemingly arbitrary deadline (why, for example, this summer’s test, instead of next summer’s?), but there is political method in the madness. As with most major projects currently underway, all roads lead to the March state election.
We’ve long presumed the federal election would be a bellwether (a term none of us has heard nearly enough of in recent days!) for the looming state poll, but we couldn’t foresee just how intrinsically the state party’s fortunes could be linked to Saturday’s vote. While Labor is lauding it over the Libs for only stealing one seat of the four they had designs on, it’s the wash-up from the Senate vote that threatens to drown Jay Weatherill.
"If he loses, he is gone, that much was always clear. But now, a narrow win won’t be enough to secure his tenure as Premier for another term. There is, as Obi-Wan Kinobi put it, “a deep disturbance in the Force”."
Since the Premier was installed to help prop up Labor’s flagging fortunes under Mike Rann, factional sniping has been kept pretty much in-house. One of the few times it threatened to spill into the public arena was when the Left carped about the fact Right faction “Godfather” Don Farrell retained the primary senate ticket spot above his cabinet superior, left-winger Penny Wong. Fanning public disquiet over the “faceless men” cliché, Labor’s lefties managed to browbeat Farrell into relinquishing the number one position, at the time considered a minor symbolic win, since both senators were likely to be re-elected in any case. But now the unthinkable has happened, with the Don poised to lose his seat.
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And that’s sending shockwaves throughout the South Australian Labor Party a mere six months out from an election.
On Saturday night, as the numbers were coming through, right-wingers were merrily predicting World War Three in the local branch of the ALP if their leader was shafted, a prospect that then still seemed too outlandish to countenance.
As this week progressed, and his chances slipped further away, the “nuclear” talk became more measured, but no-one was hiding the bitter resentment directed at the party’s left. The general conclusion was: they have to pay a price. That spells trouble for Jay Weatherill, the left-winger tolerated as party leader by the pragmatic right.
There’s no suggestion he’ll bear the brunt of the new-found disaffection, but internal disquiet is the last thing he needs as he tries to hold his weary government together. He’s already charred a few bridges, shafting factional foes and allies alike with his muscle-flexing January reshuffle. But that show of strength cost him some caucus support, a manageable risk with the polls holding up, but a self-inflicted mortal wound if Labor squanders its electoral advantage.
If he loses, he is gone, that much was always clear. But now, a narrow win won’t be enough to secure his tenure as Premier for another term. There is, as Obi-Wan Kinobi put it, “a deep disturbance in the Force”.
Despite Labor’s bolshy rhetoric about the Liberals’ continued failure to master the subtle art of marginal seat campaigning (a sledge that will smart for the Libs, who have endeavoured to fix the flaws in its disastrous 2010 state campaign, in which it drubbed Labor in the two-party preferred vote but nonetheless comfortably lost the election), an air of desperation has crept into the Weatherill camp since the weekend.
In the face of Nick Xenophon’s senate onslaught, on Wednesday the Premier did the most transparently politically-expedient thing he could think of – he held a cosy joint press conference with the No Pokies campaigner, effectively tacitly acknowledging his new-found status as South Australia’s popularly-elected leader. It backfired somewhat, though, when Mr X admitted he not only supported an Upper House inquiry into child protection Weatherill has continuously derided as a “circus”, but conceded he’d like to see Lower House ministers front the committee if called.
For Weatherill, the misplaced stunt was symbolic: a populist prank that exposed political weakness.
Labor may be in an unseemly hurry to build its infrastructure dominion, but behind the scenes it’s clear the empire is crumbling. The edifice is almost complete, but the artifice is slipping.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s political reporter.
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