SA Best MP Frank Pangallo reveals his priorities as he settles in for an eight year term in Parliament
NICK Xenophon’s right hand man with a background in backing battlers and victims wants more teeth for South Australia’s consumer watchdog.
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FRANK Pangallo has vowed to use his new role as one of the most powerful men in the South Australian Parliament to give the state’s consumer watchdog more teeth.
The SA Best Upper House MP who made a career out of chasing crooks and shonks as a “gotcha”-style journalist for Channel 7’s Today Tonight said consumer business services needed more funding and more legislative clout to protect vulnerable members of the community.
He revealed the pledge during an interview with the Sunday Mail where he also detailed his encounters with a stoned Bob Marley, a dismissive Sophia Loren, a hungover George Harrison, an angry minder protecting Frank Sinatra and an elbow- swinging Diego Maradona.
Mr Pangallo, who secured the second spot on the Upper House ticket for Nick Xenophon’s SA Best at the state election, said his background will help guide his decision making in Parliament.
He has ruled out supporting deregulating shopping hours and has reservations about legalising sex work.
But one of his first focuses will be on strengthening consumer business services.
“It is a toothless tiger,” he said. “I would dearly love to give consumer affairs more teeth and I know they’d like to be able to prosecute more cases and get out more talking to people.
“I have always felt the department was grossly under resourced meaning they could just cherry pick a few cases they can do.
“A lot of people fall through the cracks because they have no where else to turn to.”
Mr Pangallo said he is working on what legislative improvements can be made to give the department more clout.
Mr Pangallo, who says he is “gutted” Nick Xenophon is not in the Parliament with him said the man who convinced him to run for Parliament is still actively involved with decision making.
“I am going to do things with Connie (Bonaros) and Nick for the benefit for the SA community,” he said.
“He still has a strong interest in the party and on what we are doing. We are poorer for not having him in this Parliament, but he is there.”
“He will make a comeback, once he gets time to recover from the onslaught (of the election campaign.”
To be Frank...
The year was 1979 when Frank Pangallo had his brand new Sigma Scorpion coupe christened with the waft of marijuana smoke exhaled by music legend Bob Marley.
To this day, Pangallo has never had a puff on a joint but the fact that the young reporter was in such a situation says much his ability to always be in the right place at the right time.
After almost five decades as a journalist during which he interviewed the stars, the shysters and the strugglers, the 64-year-old has found himself in place he never though he would be – as an MP in State Parliament’s Upper House.
It might be argued that after dealing with so many hard-arsed and colourful characters over the years he is perfectly placed for the unpredictable and often unforgiving cauldron of politics.
“After giving so much stick to politicians as a journalist, I now find myself in defending them,” Pangallo says, as we catch up in his new office on the lower ground level of Parliament House.
“I used to say ‘I don’t want to be a politician, my job is to keep them accountable’. But over the years, I’ve had this strong interest in politics and it (being an MP) has crossed my mind.”
Pangallo now finds himself in a eight-year term, worth $191,300 a year after his mate of 20 years, Nick Xenophon, offered him the second spot on the SA Best Upper House ticket at the March election.
History shows that Xenophon’s attempt to significantly alter the state’s political landscape with his new party failed miserably – even his bid to win the seat of Hartley failed spectacularly.
Pangallo says he is “gutted” Xenophon – a former state and federal MP – is not with him at the political frontline.
While Pangallo has plenty to say about issues he wants to tackle – such as stronger protection for consumers and opposing deregulated shop-trading hours – he also loves to reminisce about some of his past exploits.
“I’m sitting there thinking ‘I’ve got the reggae king sitting in my car having a toke’,” he says with a laugh as he talks about his encounter with reggae king Marley.
In Adelaide to perform at the then Apollo Stadium, Marley and his hangers-on happily agreed to clamber into Pangallo’s car after he offered to take them for a kick of the soccer ball.
“I went to pick them up at the hotel – they all had that fuzzy hair and big hats and I thought ‘How are they going to fit in?’
“Bob gets in and sits in the front seat with me. He was stoned and they decided they were going to have a smoke.
“I said ‘Go for it’, thinking it was going to be tobacco and, of course, it wasn’t it.
“He christened it (the car).”
Pangallo, who had links with Adelaide City, gave Marley a tour of the club’s facilities, and they all had a kick around.
It is not the only story Pangallo can recall about music stars, or soccer, from his 46 years as a journalist.
In 1995, unconvinced Beatles guitarist George Harrison had checked out of the Hilton, Pangallo secured a sit down interview with the music royalty.
Operating at a time before hotel security passes, he headed to the 18th floor and asked a cleaner to point him to Harrison’s room.
Harrison answered the door sporting just a bath robe and the mother of all hangovers.
He had partied so hard the night before that he let a DJ at the hotel nightclub play the hotly anticipated final single from The Beatles called Free as a Bird – a John Lennon demo from 1977 completed in 1995 by the surviving members of the world’s most iconic band.
“Adelaide actually got the first hearing of the last Beatles recording, minus John Lennon,” Pangallo said.
But he did not always have a great relationship with celebrities. In 1974, he had a run-in with The Faces members Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood.
Wood, who would go on to become a member of The Rolling Stones, was more than a bit miffed when the young reporter asked if the group were going to trash their Australian hotel rooms as they had in New Zealand.
During Frank Sinatra’s ill-fated tour of Australia in the same year – when he referred to female journalists as “buck-and-a-half hookers – Pangallo clashed with the Sultan of Swoon’s Mob-linked protector Jilly Rizzo, in an alleyway beside Melbourne’s Festival Hall.
Pangallo, a mad-keen soccer fan who got into journalism to be a sports reporter, had one of his biggest run-ins with an idol when he travelled to the World Cup qualification playoff between Argentina and Australia, in Buenos Aires, in 1993.
He feared for his life as celebrations of an Argentine win, since placed under a cloud because of allegations of drug use, saw seven people die.
It was where he met Diego Maradona.
“There were about 300 journalists around him. It was like bees to a honey pot,” he says.
“I just pushed my way through from the back, I got to him, put my arm around him and starting talking to him in Italian asking if we could do an interview with him.
“He then went ‘whack’ right into my ribs; it winded me it was so strong.
Pangallo had learned a simple lesson – “You do not touch God”.
If Maradona was deified in Argentina, actress Sophia Loren was a queen to any young man with Italian heritage.
An approach for an autograph during the 1990 World Cup in Rome resulted in a very swift “Go away, please” – or words to that effect, Pangallo recalls.
Despite his brushes with fame, Pangallo is most remembered by TV viewers as the suit- wearing no-nonsense reporter with a penchant for tracking down shonks.
His “gotcha” style of journalism helped make Channel 7’s Today Tonight one of SA’s most watched programs.
“I’ve been stereotyped for the controversial and colourful moments dotted through my career, asking the hard questions and making scoundrels accountable,” he said in his maiden speech delivered to Parliament earlier this month.
“I have chased on foot a blind Casanova conman through the streets of Hobart, pulling a hamstring in the process, and had dodgy builders take swings at me.
“There have been rotten removalists, serial shonks and cult leaders. I threw up over a pilot while filming a story on aerial acrobatics.”
He speaks proudly about his stories that uncovered banking and financial planning fraud and malpractice, child-sex abuse, abuse of patients in nursing homes, government waste and incompetence, his work in assisting the families of dead war veterans, and supporting dying asbestos victims “who were being bullied by (manufacturer) James Hardie.”
Pangallo was born in Mile End in 1954, two years after his parents and two eldest brothers arrived in SA from southern Italy as part of the post-war European diaspora.
The Pangallo family, that also includes a daughteroys, were a typical working class immigrant family.
Pangallo is very reluctant to talking about his family – his father, Giuseppe, died aged 86 in 2010 while his mother, Maria, is 93.
He has been married to Angela, his second wife, for 21 years and is a father of three and a grandfather.
“I have always guarded my private life,” he says.
But he does offer a glimpse into his past that paints a picture of how he become a self-confessed “voice of the voiceless” who would “rush to the defence of the wronged, the oppressed, the vulnerable and those unable to defend themselves”.
“My parents battled extremely hard as labourers and process workers to put a roof over our heads and provide us with the education they never had.
“Along the way, they gave us valuable lessons in dealing with whatever fate came.”
His father, a staunch Labor man with limited English, would ask young Frank to read the newspaper to him which stimulated the youngster’s interest in politics and social issues.
Pangallo dropped out of his final year at Underdale High School and, soon after in 1972, got a job as a messenger at The News.
The job paid $14 for a six-day, 60-hour week but lead to many opportunities which ultimately led to him becoming editor in 1989.
“I rarely drink these days; I had a heart attack at 34 (1992) probably as a result of stress from working on the paper, smoking and a marriage break-up,” he says.
Pangallo says he quit drinking regularly after falling asleep while covering a murder trial after having “one red wine too many” during the lunch break with “fantastic court reporter” Jim Kernahan.
“I feel asleep, hit my head on the table, feel off my chair and the Judge was not impressed.”
Pangallo has long been on the radar of political parties.
In the 1980s, he was approached to run for Labor in the seat of that is now West Torrens in Labor heartland.
After 23 years at Today Tonight, Pangallo last year accepted a job as Xenophon’s media adviser.
“He said ‘Why don’t you come and join us and then have a think about running for us in 2018’ and then it just fell into place for me but it didn’t for Nick, which really hurt me,” he says.
“I still feel gutted for what happened during that campaign.”
But, just like Xenophon, Pangallo says he’s not going to be a soft touch in Parliament – as always, he’ll be a voice for the battlers.
What he thinks of the leaders
NICK XENOPHON
SA Best
I have known Nick for 20 years. I consider him a mentor.
He has a really political mind and he is a strategist. We are poorer for not having him in this Parliament.
His political achievements have been immense and we will miss his intellect and input.
I am confident Nick will emulate a man he admires the most, California governor Jerry Brown, and make a comeback.
STEVEN MARSHALL
Liberal Party
A genuine guy he devotes a lot of time to his community.
I think he is genuine about wanting to see South Australia go forward and do things differently. One of the first interviews Steven did when he first got into Parliament was with me and I walked away thinking ‘This guy is a future leader’.
He leaves an impression on you. He is always willing to listen and talk.
PETER MALINAUSKAS
Labor Party
He comes across as a warm, approachable person.
He is a refreshing approach from what we have had in the past where we have had a hardened ideological party machine led by Jay Weatherill.
I think we are going to see a different approach from Labor under him. He shows that he can be flexible.
I actually remember him stacking shelves at Woolies.
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