Richardson: the bold and the listless
Steven Marshall will tell anyone who will listen – and some still listen quite attentively – that fourth-term Governments of any hue are destined for inertia.
He says the Weatherill administration has run out of ideas and run out of inspiration. But there is a bit of Mandy Rice-Davies about Marshall’s sour grapes: put simply, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Interestingly, though, it’s not hard to find actual functionaries of the Weatherill administration who agree with him. Indeed, there is a view shared by many within the Government, including some Labor MPs, that their fourth-term outing is … well, not very good.
In a recent conversation with one long-serving acolyte, it was made very clear that, in my interlocutor’s opinion, the Government had stagnated and, as it currently stands, South Australia would have been far better served had the Liberals won the March election. This is from a Labor insider, and it’s a view that’s gaining some traction with the party’s malcontents.
When Jay Weatherill emerged from his State Administration Centre office flanked by Geoff Brock, his Cheshire grin betraying the fact that he’d snared another four-year term, he pledged boldness to win back those disenfranchised by a decade of neglect and wrest the state back on track.
This was the “boldness” we saw from Labor yesterday: a Government proudly – PROUDLY – boasting about SA’s July unemployment rate recording a drop of 0.1 per cent, while other states saw increases. No awkward embarrassment at the fact that after 12 years of Labor rule, the headline rate of 7.2 per cent remains entrenched as the highest on the mainland.
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No shame at the fact the various sectors touted as economic saviors have proved over-hyped and underwhelming, bedevilled (unfortunately) by market whim and (inevitably) by bureaucratic incompetence. Mining has fallen in a hole and defence is fast sailing off into the sunset.
In this context, celebrating the dubious achievement of a 7.2 per cent unemployment rate is quintessentially SA Labor – proudly mired in mediocrity. The Government, it seems, is happy for the state to flounder as long as it flounders under the ALP banner.
Like the quasi-Keynesians that they are, they tend to throw around public money to stimulate the flagging economy. The Premier spent election eve wandering around the new Royal Adelaide Hospital site and dropping a few chest marks at the re-modelled Adelaide Oval – both of them achievements of the Rann/Foley era.
Ironically, Weatherill seems destined to revel in the successes of the men he ousted, while crashing on the failures of portfolios he held under their stewardship: Education, Families and Communities, Environment, Public Sector Management.
Jay’s glossy manifesto was eternally clutched to his chest throughout the campaign, but once you pare back the re-announcements and flesh out the new commitments, the biggest infrastructure spending promises amount to a vaguely articulated tunnel under Hackney Road from the O-Bahn (of questionable merit), a significant upgrade of the Flinders Medical Centre (now scrapped), the electrification of the Gawler rail line to Salisbury (now delayed yet again) and a new high school on the old RAH site (outside the forward estimates and reliant on the dubious timely delivery of the new hospital).
" We appear content to score cheap points as we calmly and deliberately steer the ship of state into the next economic storm."
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There was no concerted discussion, and remains none, about the genuine structural hurdles facing both the national economy and the state one. Any suggestion, for instance, of broadening the GST base or increasing the rate will be howled down on populist political grounds, and yet the Government happily spends taxpayers’ money on advertising to bemoan federal funding cuts.
The Labor crew may be coasting, but they’re kept afloat (as they have been for many years) by an even more underwhelming Opposition.
If Marshall has a fair point about the directionless, flaccid nature of fourth-term governments, his own side of politics is all the more culpable for not doing enough to make itself electable. The Liberals appear to have clutched at the most obvious straw – the fact they received a clear majority of the popular vote, and have built their post-poll autopsy around the presumption that “we woz robbed!”
It’s an understandable delusion, but one that does neither them nor the electorate any favours.
Unless the Libs get to grips with how to construct and articulate a cogent platform for Government – a bold one, even! – they’re no certainty to end Labor’s 16 years of rule come 2018.
Scoring points on child-protection failures and moving fruitless (even if occasionally successful) no-confidence motions against hapless ministers may help fill in the time between now and the next election and contribute to the air of chaos now surrounding Labor, but it doesn’t add to the broader debate about how to salvage a state mired in under-achievement.
This was a point made stridently by Liberal defector Martin Hamilton-Smith (when he wasn’t doing his best to prejudice court proceedings) during yesterday’s debate over a no-confidence motion against Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine. This is the same Martin Hamilton-Smith, mind you, who as Opposition Leader christened Pat Conlon the “Minister for Stuff-Ups” and would regularly stage theatrical walk-outs from Labor-chaired parliamentary committees in a bid to generate publicity – but I suppose it’s rare to succeed in politics (or media, come to that) without succumbing to some degree of hypocrisy.
At any rate, the Government line was that it was happy to allow the confidence motion, since it gave the Labor side free rein to attack the Opposition without having to answer a single question. So, business as usual, then!
There is a crisis of governance at both state and national level in Australia; we appear content to score cheap points as we calmly and deliberately steer the ship of state into the next economic storm. The Government appears mired in the delusion that somehow the economy will simply right itself over the next four years, while the Opposition has never relinquished its own fantasy that the electoral pendulum will eventually swing its way with minimal effort.
Jay Weatherill promised to be bold. At the moment, I’d just settle for interested.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s state political reporter.
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