Adam Langenberg: Jay Weatherill was quietly spoken but cunning as a fox

The legacy of Jay Weatherill is a forceful negotiator who continually defied expectations and extended Labor’s grip on power beyond what most expected.

• Former premier Jay Weatherill to retire from politics

On numbers alone, Jay Weatherill should never have become the state’s 45th premier.

Hailing from the Labor Party’s left faction, the softly spoken former lawyer should barely have been in the conversation about who would replace Mike Rann in 2011.

One of the senior figures in the party’s dominant right, including John Rau, Jack Snelling and Tom Koutsantonis, should have been odds on.

But as he did for most of his career, Mr Weatherill negotiated into a position of strength.

This eventually prompted the then-shoppies union leader Peter Malinauskas to walk into Mr Rann’s office and tell him the union supported Mr Weatherill to take over.

Those same negotiation skills were on display in 2014 when Labor not only didn’t lose the “unwinnable” election, but Mr Weatherill’s ham and pineapple pizza diplomacy was enough to convince Independent Geoff Brock to help him form government, before shocking everyone by convincing former Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith to defect.

Normally talking at a volume you had to strain to hear, Mr Weatherill packed an unexpected punch when he went on the attack.

Former premier Jay Weatherill speaks to MPs after he announced his retirement on Thursday. AAP Image/Sam Wundke

He shocked North Tce insiders by announcing on live radio that he would block any attempt by Labor godfather Don Farrell to enter state politics, and would quit if the party didn’t bend to his will.

But the salvo that got tongues wagging right around the nation came in 2017, when Mr Weatherill gatecrashed a press conference to savage an unexpecting Josh Frydenberg, then federal energy minister.

It was seen as so out of character and ferocious that it’s immortalised on coffee mugs, but the history shows that Mr Weatherill’s best political successes came with his back against the wall.

With SA labelled a national laughing stock after the statewide blackout in 2016, Mr Weatherill responded by seizing the political licence to double down on an investment in renewable energy, turning a glaring policy weakness into a point of pride.

He fought to ensure as much water as possible flowed into South Australia as part of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, and was influential in ensuring the future submarines program was not lost interstate or overseas.

It ensures Mr Weatherill will mostly be remembered as a forceful negotiator who continually defied expectations and extended Labor’s grip on power beyond what most expected.