Inside story: How Premier Peter Malinauskas found out Susan Close and Stephen Mullighan were quitting politics
Step inside the Premier’s office as his top two lieutenants drop their bombshell.
An innocuous text message to Premier Peter Malinauskas from his university mate and right-hand man Stephen Mullighan heralded the end of his Treasurer’s political career.
“Can we catch up?” asked Mr Mullighan, who about two decades ago had coaxed the Premier into Labor student politics at the University of Adelaide.
Not long afterwards, he was in the Premier’s Victoria Square office at the State Administration Centre, decorated with posters including a vintage shot of the pair’s beloved Port Adelaide Magpies winning yet another SANFL premiership.
Then Mr Mullighan, who had been mentioned as a leadership contender after Labor’s 2018 election loss, floored his boss by revealing he would quit politics at next March’s state election.
The secret was kept for weeks – it’s not clear precisely how many – until The Advertiser exclusively revealed the leadership bombshell early on Thursday afternoon.
Mr Malinauskas did not even reveal the Treasurer’s intentions to his Deputy Premier, Susan Close, until this week, after returning last Saturday from a seven-day defence trade mission to the United Kingdom.
Dr Close had flummoxed the Premier too, with her decision to quit at the next election, delivered a little while after he returned from leave in the July school holidays to be confronted with the erupting algal bloom crisis.
The Deputy Premier, 57, had been watching her “mother disappear into dementia over the last four years” and been reminded that “life is finite and it is precious and it is way shorter than you think when you’re young”.
She had intended to tell Mr Malinauskas of her decision immediately after his return from leave in July.
Instead, Dr Close, the Environment and Water Minister, had to wait a few weeks as the algal bloom crisis intensified on her watch and the government came under huge pressure.
After a cabinet meeting in the State Administration Centre, she took aside the Premier and also asked if they could catch up privately.
Later that day, also in Mr Malinauskas’s office, Dr Close told him of her decision.
“You could have knocked me over with a feather when the Deputy Premier told me that it was her intention to not run again at the next election, and then not too long after that when the Treasurer said the same thing,” the Premier told The Advertiser in an exclusive interview on Thursday morning.
“Naturally, my reaction was exactly the same. I was really disappointed by it. I like to think every now and then I can persuade people to do things. I was completely unable to persuade them to stick around despite my best efforts. So naturally, I’m really sad to be losing them both,” he said, in an interview at his Parliament House office.
Just after The Advertiser exclusively revealed the bombshell news of their departures, Mr Mullighan and Dr Close were standing alongside Mr Malinauskas in the State Administration Centre’s media room.
During the press conference, Dr Close revealed “almost no one” had known about the top-level leadership secret until then.
“It’s been a remarkably tight group. And I didn’t know about Stephen and he didn’t know about me until this week. Peter has been very scrupulous, and we hold our confidentiality very tight. As Stephen and I think the Premier also said, we are a disciplined team and it’s a good example of it,” she said.
All three choked back tears, on occasion, as they talked to the assembled media. Mr Mullighan, in particular, became emotional as he was watched by his wife, Antonia, and three children: Ben, 10, Isaac, 7, and Olivia, 4.
“I’m in a position where I’ve lost both my parents. Antonia’s lost her father. It takes a village to raise children, and our village is a little smaller than most,” he said, falteringly.
Regardless of the reasons, their departures leave a massive hole at the top of the Malinauskas government, which a YouGov poll published in June showed was storming towards a historic election landslide that would consign its Liberal rivals to a future-threatening two seats.
Mr Malinauskas rejects criticism that his frontbench is thin beyond some talented top performers.
Regardless, there are few historical instances of a dominant, first-term government losing two of its top three leaders.
This creates an unexpected opening for Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia, who on Thursday afternoon appeared to have been injected with a fresh burst of enthusiasm for the momentous fight ahead of his party to avoid electoral disaster next March.
Mr Malinauskas assured The Advertiser he was not going anywhere, despite also having a young family and a challenging job.
But, by his own admission, he wanted Mr Mullighan and Dr Close to stay and, crucially, failed to persuade them to stick around.
