How the major parties shared intel in their bid to crush Nick Xenophon at the 2018 SA election
Former minister Christopher Pyne has revealed the steps the major parties took to defeat Nick Xenophon, and how close Australia’s next generation of subs came to being built in Japan.
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The Liberals and ALP met to “mull over” and share information on their efforts to thwart Nick Xenophon’s State election bid for SA Best in 2018, in which he was subsequently “poleaxed”.
Former federal Liberal minister and factional powerbroker Christopher Pyne reveals in his new political memoir The Insider that he organised a meeting with Labor’s left wing heavyweight Nick Bolkus.
“Despite our differences, we caught up for coffee almost as soon as Xenophon announced he was running,” Mr Pyne writes in his new book about the post-Howard years of coups and infighting in Canberra. “We needed to mull over what could be done.”
Mr Pyne told The Advertiser that he hadn’t done a specific deal with Labor over Hartley, which was eventually won by Liberal Vincent Tarzia. Mr Bolkus also said it was “information sharing” not deal-making.
“We didn’t make any agreement that day, but at least we both knew the other didn’t want Xenophon to win in Hartley,” Mr Pyne writes.
Mr Pyne said that if Labor had “run dead” by not picking a serious candidate, Mr Xenophon could have potentially picked up enough preferences to be a threat.
“Not only did they not do that, they ran the best candidate possible from the Liberals’ point of view – the former Labor Member for the seat Grace Portolesi. She campaigned to win.”
Mr Pyne said the second critical issue was that the two major parties issued a ‘split ticket’ as their how-to-vote cards.
“A split ticket means that the party indicates what numbers to place in the boxes on the ballot paper for either the other major party in preference to Xenophon or for Xenophon in preference to the other major party,” he writes. “Both Liberal and Labor issued a split ticket. Xenophon was politically poleaxed.”
Mr Xenophon hit back at Mr Pyne saying “the Fixer has confirmed what I suspected all along – that the cosy Liberal-Labor duopoly will do anything to kill off independent voices in the parliament – especially those voices that want to shake up and reform the system.”
Mr Xenophon, now back in legal practice, added that it also showed that “despite all the sound and fury between Liberal and Labor, when it comes to protecting their privileged patch, they’re actually best mates – they would prefer to have their ‘arch enemy’ elected rather than someone from the political centre.”
Mr Pyne said he had nothing against Mr Xenophon personally, but he did recall how he had tried hard to defeat him in Sturt and “I don’t forget”.
“I don’t like people trying to knock me off. He came very close to knocking me off. So when he announced he was running for Hartley, I thought, how fantastic! It’s a terrible mistake. A marginal seat to start with and it’s in my patch. So I’m going to work tirelessly to try to stop him from winning.
“All of political professionals are thinking this guy has just left an impregnable fortress to come out here onto the field against Liberals and Labor, and if we can defeat him in Hartley he’s not going back in the Senate.
“It’s like removing your queen from the chess board. For a pawn. I thought wow. So away we went. It was so surprising. One of the most surprising things in politics.”
JAPAN NEARLY BUILT OUR SUBS: PYNE
Roy Eccleston
Australia’s next generation of submarines came “perilously close” to being built overseas rather than South Australia, former Coalition defence industry minister Christopher Pyne says.
In his new book The Insider, Mr Pyne sheds new light on the $90b project, which in 2014 was feared likely to go to a Japanese consortium with the support of then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Mr Pyne told The Advertiser the Defence Department never wanted to build the 12 submarines overseas.
“But I had a very distinct impression from conversations within the government that we were perilously close to the submarines not being built in Australia,” he said. “And I regarded that as unacceptable.”
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said Mr Abbott would have awarded the deal to Japan, which wanted to build the submarines there.
Mr Pyne said the initial selection process between Japanese, German and French contenders was not open, and would have been decided inside the government.
However, leadership tensions in early 2015 saw Mr Abbott forced to agree to a more transparent process.
“Senator Sean Edwards and South Australian MPs – not me because I was in the Cabinet - rung out of Abbott a commitment to a competitive evaluation process as part of that leadership contest,” Mr Pyne said. “It was taken out of the hands of just the politicians and became a defence process.”
Mr Pyne said he did not know if the threat to Mr Abbott saved the submarines from going to Japan. In the subsequent process, the Japanese lost out to the French Shortfin Barracuda design.
“My hunch is we were perilously close to having the subs built elsewhere, but it didn’t happen,” he said. “I think a whole number of factors collided to ensure they were built in Australia.”
