Daniel Wills: Treasurer Rob Lucas is getting ready to move aside. It should worry Liberals that no one is stepping up to take the prize.
The race is on for SA’s Treasurer’s office. But as Rob Lucas gets ready to go, the Liberals face a tough search for a safe money option, writes Daniel Wills. VOTE IN OUR POLL
Opinion
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From almost the moment that the Liberals secured victory at the last election, and Treasurer Rob Lucas got back a job he’d been waiting for 16 years in opposition to return to, speculation started about who was waiting to eventually replace him.
Mr Lucas is quite a rare figure in politics, and has a refreshing habit of answering genuine questions directly. So it was when The Advertiser asked him at the end of an interview, just a week after the 2018 election, if he was considering running again and staying in the job beyond 2022.
No way, he answered. After almost four decades in parliament, this is his last dance. That fired the starting gun on a race to follow him as cabinet’s most powerful minister.
The carrot is even juicier given persistent talk in Liberal circles that Premier Steven Marshall is unlikely to be the kind of leader who seeks endless re-elections, and suggestion he’d be more intent on a managed transition at some point.
True or not, that perception has many believing that becoming the next treasurer can be a stepping stone to the big chair some day.
Events of the past few weeks, particularly Transport Minister Stephan Knoll’s spectacular double backflip on bus stops and Service SA centres, has thrown the market into chaos.
Mr Knoll had been promoted to a huge job after the election, building media profile and advancing up the chain of responsibility in parliament.
That all made him short favourite to fill Mr Lucas’ well-worn shoes.
While large sections of the public do seem pleased that Mr Knoll had the humility to drop a bus plan that consultation concluded was a dud, colleagues have been less forgiving.
While many give him credit for courage and reformist zeal, there’s deep disappointment at how the plan was conceived and then pitched.
One Liberal MP said: “The backbench were completely taken by surprise and couldn't believe they were being told to try and sell it.
“That’s no way to go about getting support (from colleagues). It’s taken a lot of paint off,” the MP said.
Another senior Liberal source said the bungled public pitch, particularly the refusal to come completely clean on how many bus stops were in the firing line, showed alarming immaturity in handling the sort of big time issues that are the daily trade of treasurers and premiers.
Several well-placed Liberal sources this week said there was now almost no doubt Mr Lucas would stay treasurer all the way to the next election, with an early handover off the cards completely. But they add that there will be inevitable questions about who would serve in a re-elected government that must be clearly answered before voting day.
Other contenders are those who also sit on the budget subcommittee of cabinet – Attorney-General Vickie Chapman, Education Minister John Gardner and Environment Minister David Speirs – and have some experience at Mr Lucas’ side.
Ms Chapman is generally counted out of discussions given that, as deputy leader, she could have demanded the money role long ago but instead settled into the justice job.
Mr Gardner and Mr Speirs both have similar limitations. Unlike Mr Knoll, who took on seriously tough issues and lost, neither has gone through an initiation of fire.
Both have achieved in their portfolios. Mr Gardner is rolling out a huge school infrastructure program, and is well-liked even by factional rivals on the backbench for quick and often personal responses to issues that MPs raise. Mr Speirs oversaw a massive cut in water bills that’s the Liberals’ best marginal seat weapon, and is having wins on banning single-use plastics and improving parks.
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But there’s a sense among colleagues that it’s hard to know how they would go at the next level.
Those all seem a bit too easy.
Energy and Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan has shown himself to be earnest and across his brief, and is turning around the mess that he inherited. But he lacks a ruthless instinct that treasurers need.
Which leaves Mr Marshall himself, by the process of elimination, as a credible option.
He’s grown in confidence and political skill while in office and there’s plenty of examples in history, from Playford to Dunstan, of SA leaders doing both jobs.
But endless quotes from the past that would come back to bite Mr Marshall if he did, after savaging former premier Jay Weatherill for doing the double act and becoming a “part time treasurer” before the 2014 election. It’s hard enough to be premier and treasurer without also inviting claims of hypocrisy.
More than two years on from Mr Lucas issuing that invitation for colleagues to step up and take over, none have separated themselves.
That has to worry a government that will eventually emerge from the suspended political reality of COVID-19 needing a plan for the new normal.