Michael McGuire: The Dawkins defection caps off a very messy few months for Steven Marshall’s government
The Premier’s path to the election should have been easy but months of scandals and messes reveal a risk the SA Liberals’ infamous dysfunction will return, writes Michael McGuire.
Opinion
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In one sense, Treasurer Rob Lucas is right. It’s hard to imagine too many households across the state sitting down to dinner and pondering the perfidy and career moves of new Legislative Council president John Dawkins.
If, and this is still a stretch, his name came up at all, it would have been accompanied by the question – “who?’’.
Dawkins may have been in parliament since 1997 – only Lucas has been in the parliament longer – but surely no more than a handful of South Australians would have any clue who he is, even though he has done some good work in the suicide-prevention field.
Not that he would be alone in such a lack of public acclaim. The Legislative Council is the state’s biggest retirement home outside Victor Harbor.
But the Dawkins defection caps off a very messy few months for Steven Marshall’s government. And, even though it’s still 18 months away, that has implications for the next state election.
By all rights, the path to the next election should have been fairly straightforward for Marshall and the Liberal Party. Marshall is fond of the saying “never waste a crisis” and he handled COVID-19 well. It elevated him in the eyes of the public. Gave him a standing and trust that he had never experienced previously, even though he had comfortably won the 2018 election.
He had taken over from a Labor government that was pretty tired after 16 years in charge and had experienced a terrible last term. There was an expectation that Labor was to be consigned to opposition for a minimum of two terms.
That’s no longer so clear cut. Marshall is still favourite to win in 2022 but the gap is narrowing. A few months back, when he was appearing every day alongside chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier detailing the state’s path out of COVID, he appeared almost unassailable.
Then he was 80-20 to win the next election. Now it could be 60-40, maybe even tighter. Also a recent draft ruling by the Electoral Boundaries Commission, which placed more seats within Labor’s grasp, was a blow.
The damage done this week to the Liberal Party could be as much internal as external.
There was the original tied vote in the Lower House before Josh Teague was elected as Speaker. Then the usurping of Jing Lee, the party’s endorsed candidate for the Legislative Council presidency, by Dawkins.
Before that, the quite extraordinary letter written by federal Liberal MPs Nicolle Flint, Tony Pasin and Alex Anticdemanding Lee’s alleged links to China be investigated.
For anyone who has paid attention to the internal workings of the Liberal Party during recent decades, all the signs are familiar. Internal wrangling, factional wars, fights over the smallest of baubles. It was one of the reasons the Liberal Party didn’t win an election between 1997 and 2018.
One of Marshall’s achievements was to put the lid on all that rubbish, but it looks again that the pressure cooker is about to burst.
And that is all before we mention the ICAC investigation into how a number of country MPs used their accommodation allowance.
So, while, Lucas may be right in believing most South Australians aren’t that fussed about who wears the wig in the LegCo, they do tend to become a little more animated when it comes to behaviour that could be categorised as “snouts in the trough’’.
So far, former ministers Stephan Knoll and Tim Whetstone, former Upper House president Terry Stephens, former government whip Adrian Pederick and backbencher Fraser Ellis have repaid various amounts of money. And the new ICAC Commissioner Ann Vanstone is conducting an investigation into the whys and wherefores of those claims.
If criminal charges are laid against one or more of these MPs, the damage to the Government will be serious. They are also unlikely to be resolved before the election, giving Labor the opportunity to keep banging the drum. Then there is the case of Sam Duluk, who resigned as a Liberal MP after being charged with assaulting fellow MP Connie Bonaros.
Even if, by the end of all this, no wrongdoing is discovered, the Liberal Party has looked sloppy, careless and entitled. The Premier has a challenging 18 months ahead.