Richardson: The secret of Jay’s success
It’s said that history is written by the victors, and the Labor Government is busily creating its own narrative for this inauspicious point in South Australia’s political history.
It’s a grand narrative; one that has Adelaide positioned on the cusp of great and wonderful things. And one that owes all of this greatness and wonder to our hero, the Honourable Jay Wilson Weatherill, MP.
Like a cheesy lifestyle coach, Weatherill has pinpointed the secret of his success and, sure enough, it’s a lifestyle decision: Choosing To Win (which itself sounds like the title of some discounted political hagiography).
“Choosing to win” was how the Premier described the start of Jay’s Velvet Revolution as he sat before business leaders yesterday at an Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch, taking questions from a bunch of men and women probably still smarting about yet again being lumbered with a Labor administration.
“There were some people in our party who felt that three terms was respectable,” Weatherill explained. He didn’t name names. But he did point out that hastening a few retirements was instrumental to overturning that mindset.
It was a telling Q&A session, because it offered an insight into the paranoia that naturally festers in the upper echelons of politics. As a Left-faction Premier in a Right-controlled Labor caucus, Weatherill is accustomed to looking over his shoulder. Perhaps that explains the Us-vs-Them mentality that emerged in the course of what was on the surface an amiable, informal chat.
He spoke of the success of Labor’s liquor licensing deregulation for small bars, proudly championing them as underdogs fighting back against the “big end of town that used to pocket” the drinkers’ dime. Which is an odd gambit when addressing the big end of town.
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He wistfully reminisced on the rapturous reception his ministry enjoyed at this week’s Riverland country cabinet.
“This was Tiger country for us – we barely get a vote in the Riverland,” the Premier enthused. But, he beamed, the locals were almost universally welcoming and positive, “and the TVs had to work very hard to get a story that portrayed the opposite impression”.
It’s no wonder Weatherill has that slight bent toward control freakery, what with so many quarters out to thwart his grand plans: Labor naysayers, Liberal naysayers, big business naysayers, media naysayers. He must feel like he’s in the middle of some bizarre rodeo, what with so many opponents saying nay.
But the tone of this Government is now unthinkingly disparaging about anything that veers from its own crusading self-image.
Weatherill sneered yesterday at the fact the Opposition had capitalized on a series of burst city water mains to criticize the deteriorating SA Water infrastructure. He was conducting a media conference to announce the worthy appointment of Hieu Van Le as SA’s next Governor, and he suggested the Opposition had nothing better to do than mire itself in trivia. But gallons of water going to waste due to ageing arteries isn’t trivial to customers who are struggling under the burden of spiraling utility costs. It’s not trivial to commuters and city workers whose day is disrupted by the lengthy clean-up.
" In keeping with his understated style, Weatherill is determined to avoid the gaudy symbols so beloved of the Rann era."
Weatherill now treats the state Libs with open disdain. He only gave Marshall a minute’s notice of the vice-regal appointment yesterday; he certainly didn’t consult him. He considers the federal Coalition his genuine adversary; hence the Budget narrative that it’s all Abbott and Hockey’s fault.
True enough, even the SA Libs acknowledge federal cuts have had a budget impact. But painting the entire state budget as a response to a federal shortfall has become a near-obsession for Labor. As I discovered this week, evidently if you don’t mention federal cuts every time you cover a budget story you will get a “Please Explain”, which is good, as journos just love helpful ideas from press secs about how they should have written their stories!
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But it tells us something about this Government in its fourth term: the narrative has to be according to its whim. It won the election, so it gets to write history.
And the towering figure in this history is the Premier.
There’s no doubt Weatherill has grown in stature since March, and increasingly so. There can be a fine line between bitter failure and shining success, and that line was in one of the many marginal seats that Labor clung on to by its fingernails. If one of them had gone another way, he’d certainly be gone from the leadership by now, probably even from parliament; a brief footnote at the end of the Rann era: “Do you remember that time the Labor Right was so desperate they installed a left-winger for a couple of years?”
Now, though, he has the capacity to create his own legacy, as formidable as Rann’s, perhaps much more so. After all, he shares his predecessor’s appetite for victory predicated on the assumption that all around him are willing him to lose.
With Labor having won three elections, Weatherill wanted a fourth. Having won more seats than the Opposition, he doggedly pursued crossbench support. Having done enough to guarantee a parliamentary majority, he strove to bolster it. And now, with his Premiership certain, he has finally turned his resolute focus towards moulding the state.
One last telling observation he made yesterday: politics aside, it’s not that difficult to deal with Canberra. But it will be difficult to deal with Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales in the near future, because they’re all in the final year of their election cycle, and any policy debate will be conducted through that prism.
If that is so, then right now is the most fertile time for the Weatherill Government to actually make its re-election count for something. The budget was an inauspicious start, but there is time for this harsh medicine to be swallowed, digested and to have worked its curative powers (if it has any) before the party is again on a genuine election footing.
In keeping with his understated style, Weatherill is determined to avoid the gaudy symbols so beloved of the Rann era.
He doesn’t want a BHP-style saviour that will swoop down and rescue our ailing economy, favouring a sober discussion about how to encourage small and medium businesses to prosper.
It’s a stretch, of course, to go from that to claiming Labor is “the natural party of business”, as his Treasurer did last week. But then, history is written by the victors.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s state political reporter.
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