Opposition leader Steven Marshall has hired heavyweight political adviser Richard Yeeles to help him win the election
HE has a long history of advising state Liberal governments and working with corporate heavies like BHP Billiton, now he’s about to help Opposition leader Steven Marshall win the next state election.
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OPPOSITION leader Steven Marshall has installed heavyweight political adviser Richard Yeeles in his office to guide him to a hoped-for victory at the next state election.
The Liberals, who are chasing their first term of office in South Australia in 16 years, are expected to call on top strategists, Crosby Textor, whose co-founder, Kadina-born Sir Lynton Crosby helped David Cameron to victory in the UK in 2015. Sir Lynton is advising Prime Minister Theresa May for the UK’s June 8 poll.
The SA Liberals are currently not engaged with Crosby Textor but are likely to want to use them in the lead up to next year’s campaign for polling to finesse their final-stage messaging.
Mr Marshall, who survived the March 2014 loss but cannot risk another, hired Mr Yeeles in November to take charge of policy and the timing of announcements.
Mr Yeeles political credentials date back to the Tonkin Government and the Liberal blood feuds of the 1990s when he was chief of staff for rivals and former premiers John Olsen and Dean Brown, as well as
Dale Baker.
A former ABC journalist, in 2014 he published an e-book, Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell: Too Long Untold — Don Dunstan in Life and Politics that called the former Labor icon corrupt in the way he helped a male lover while in office.
Regarded internally as “a fantastic addition” to Mr Marshall’s team, Mr Yeeles was a long-time adviser through BHP to the Weatherill Government as a member of the Resources Industry Development Board.
He also spent almost two decades in the mining sector, mainly at Olympic Dam with both Western Mining and BHP Billiton, where he was corporate affairs manager.
With a substantial third-party threat looming from Nick Xenophon’s SA Best, Mr Yeeles will be drawing on his considerable political experience to deliver Mr Marshall the win that narrowly eluded him last time around.
His arrival is part of a personnel overhaul that includes the appointment of the respected Sascha Meldrum as the party’s State Director, replacing Geoff Greene.
Ms Meldrum also worked with the Olsen and Kerin Liberal governments in the 1990s, was a media adviser with the Howard Government and spent five years as public affairs director for the Air Warfare Destroyer project.