Matthew Abraham: SA Transport Minister Stephan Knoll is clearly out of his depth and must go
After the bus cuts fiasco, surely it’s dawning on Premier Steven Marshall that his transport minister’s faulty political radar has become a liability, writes Matthew Abraham.
Opinion
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Mike Rann had a kitbag full of sayings, one for every emergency. If his government was having a rocky week and the troops were getting restless, the former Labor premier would pose this question: “Would you rather be us, or them?”
The “us” was being the party in government, no matter how precariously — and it was dodgy indeed in the first term as Labor stitched together wacky deals with a rabble of conservative independents to hold it all together. Remember the promise to eradicate broomrape, one of the demands levied by the late Peter Lewis, member for Mallee, Liberal defector, Speaker and much-missed oddball?
He was OK, was our Peter. Broomrape is a parasitic herbaceous plant pest, before you ask.
And the “them”? That’d be the poor sods sitting across the chamber, the Liberals, who in 2002 were staring glumly into the abyss of what morphed into 16 years in opposition.
The “would you rather be us than them” question is always worth asking yourself if you’re having a bad day.
But here’s another Rann maxim: “A dead fish smells worse at the end of the week than at the beginning.” This is by no means original. It’s in the kitbag of many successful leaders. It means if a scandal erupts or a policy is on the nose, it’s better to confront it early, before it starts to pong to high heaven. As someone who loses the odd slippery garfish under the floor of the tinny, trust me, it doesn’t take long for a dead fish to turn whiffy.
The events of the past week demonstrate it’s a lesson Liberal Premier Steven Marshall needs to learn soon and fast.
On Monday, Marshall finally binned his government’s controversial plan to cut almost 1000 bus stops for regular public transport users.
Transport Minister Stephan Knoll proudly touted his bus policy a fortnight ago, billing it as a “bold” and “generational” reform to Adelaide’s bus system.
The opposition ripped it to bits in days. Once the sleepy Liberal party room cottoned on that his plan was a total dud, they too were in open revolt.
By the time the Premier put it out of its misery, it was already a stinker with bus commuters. By totally abandoning the reform quickly he’s contained the damage, but not before handing a juicy little victory to Labor.
The bigger question is how on earth the Knoll plan, in its final form, made it through cabinet and the Liberal party room in the first place.
What did they think was going to happen with a “bold” plan to make it harder for people to catch a bus?
Did anyone sitting around the cabinet table suggest it sounded dicky? Or did they hope nobody would notice that the bus stops had vanished from their streets, like Dr Who’s Tardis? Now you see ’em, now you don’t.
On the same day, the government also dumped another unpopular policy — the inexplicable closure of Service SA centres at Modbury, Mitcham and Prospect. Incredibly, this particular dead fish wasn’t two weeks old, it was almost two years old. Treasurer Rob Lucas announced it in the first Marshall budget all the way back in September 2018.
At the time, Knoll said: “We made some tough decisions in the budget and we stand by those decisions.
“At the moment, the cost of someone going into a Service SA centre is about $17 and to provide that service online costs about 40c,” he added.
He said the three centres — Modbury and Prospect are two of the state’s busiest — had been selected on “geographical” grounds. Just like the bus stops he wanted to chop.
Knoll is clearly out of his depth as Transport Minister and needs to go.
Surely it’s dawning on Marshall that his minister’s faulty political radar has become a liability.
The Weatherill government’s hugely unpopular and pointless decision to sell the Daw Park Repatriation Hospital was made in 2015 and was allowed to rot right up until Labor lost the 2018 election.
It thought the odour would just waft away, but it didn’t.
Would you rather be us or them? It depends on how much you like the smell of dead fish.