Matthew Abraham: Top cop Grant Stevens is now Dad-joke dictator of SA

The most powerful people in the state, as revealed by The Advertiser, aren’t our elected representatives, writes Matthew Abraham

Paul the tent maker had his epiphany on the road to Damascus. Grant Stevens had his in the sock section of an Adelaide department store.

It was a flash of blinding light that changed Paul from a man who persecuted Christians to his career change as the most zealous apostle of Jesus. We’re not sure what did the trick for a young Grant Stevens.

But in a recent alumni profile by the University of SA, our police commissioner reveals he was “relatively directionless throughout his adolescence”, and didn’t particularly excel in school either.

“Throughout my schooling career, I was nothing inspirational,” he says. “I wasn’t particularly motivated and didn’t apply myself very well, but that all changed when I found something that was worth studying for.”

After his socktake – Police Commissioner Grant Stevens. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

One Saturday afternoon, sorting socks during stocktake at a large department store, his old university says he had “an epiphany that retail wasn’t for him”.

What a stroke of luck for us all. The SA police force became his religion and he its chief apostle.

And so it has come to pass that for the past 20 months, we have been happy to have decisions about almost every aspect of our personal, intimate daily lives made by this one cop. As Covid chief, he wields extraordinary powers under a state of emergency in force since March 22 last year.

The late journalist Stewart Cockburn dubbed Tom Playford the “benevolent dictator” in his definitive biography of the mighty Liberal premier.

Grant Stevens is our Dad-joke Dictator, giving us glimpses of dry humour amid the serious business of managing a pandemic. It came as no surprise that on Wednesday he topped The Advertiser’s Power 50 list of the most influential South Australians of 2021, soaring 36 places on last year’s rankings.

It did come as a surprise to see Premier Steven Marshall in second place, up one spot. Too high.

His hands-off strategy during the entire course of the pandemic should see him batting at six or seven, jostling with Labor leader Peter Malinauskas in the middle order.

Maybe this is harsh. But anyone who’s ever had the job of drawing up the guest list for a wedding will know that lists are the stuff of arguments and ruthless decisions.

Putting aside the crushing disappointment of yet again failing to make the Top 50 – maybe they’ve got me stuck on 51 – the list provides a virtual mud map not just of the past 12 months, but the 13 weeks to the next election.

Our local businesses have carried the burden of the pandemic restrictions, providing leadership and certainty when it has been missing from our politicians.

Drake supermarket boss John Paul Drake, at spot 19, shows the power of plain speaking to slice through the SA Health fog of matrixes and vertical consumption.

Former Liberal MP Chris Pyne used his column in Monday’s The Advertiser to sketch the countdown to the 2022 state election. As you’d expect from Chris, who dropped 13 spots to Number 45, it was engaging and thoughtful. He rightly points out that firm predictions shouldn’t be made until just before polling day.

Good advice. Elections can be, in fact often are, won or lost in the week before the vote. This is particularly so in SA, where our small parliament is finely balanced and government hinges on one or two seats changing hands.

He skirts around the fact the Liberals have four seats under 2 per cent, saying the incumbent MPs are “all strong local campaigners and well liked in the constituencies”.

This may be true, but if there’s a swing on, the most likeable MPs still get clobbered.

And if he thinks the arts community will swing enough votes the way of the artsy Premier Marshall to win the election, he’s dreaming.

Elections aren’t won on the dance floor.

But the savvy political veteran nails a key point – “people are over Covid” and looking for a way out of this mess.

It will take an unprecedented political hard sell over the next 90 days for Steven Marshall or Peter Malinauskas to convince voters they can lead South Australians to the sunlit uplands of a normal life, if such a thing exists any more.

I doubt any post-war political leaders in this state have faced such a tough road to victory.

Commissioner Stevens may be the Covid emperor, but when it comes to that political challenge, the emperor has no clothes. Nobody’s going to find the answer by rummaging in his sock drawer.