Why the Coalition is scared of Nick Xenophon

NICK Xenophon and his eponymously named micro-party is becoming the story of an abominably boring election campaign, says Simon Benson.

Senator Nick Xenophon / Picture: Kelly Barnes

SUDDENLY everyone in politics is talking about the mercurial Greek from South Australia. They are even talking about him in Western Sydney. God only knows why.

The gutter war the Coalition has now declared against him probably has something to do with it. But either way, Nick Xenophon and his eponymously named micro-party is becoming the story of an abominably boring election campaign.

If the polling can be believed, Xenophon will end up sharing or commanding the balance of power in the Senate after July 2. It is entirely possible that his team of one — himself — will suddenly expand to become a mini Senate superpower.

But internal Coalition polling is already bearing out a scarier scenario for the government — if it wins — in which Xenophon candidates pick off one or even two lower house seats from the Liberals in South Australia.

Forget the spectre of Greens/Labor alliance. In terms of hypotheticals that politicians always refuse to comment on but privately obsess about, it could well end up being Xenophon who will decide who forms government in the unlikely event of a hung parliament.

John Howard didn’t turn up in Adelaide this week just because he likes the place. The ­Coalition is deeply worried about Xenophon. Jamie Briggs’ seat of Mayo is at risk, as is fellow South Australian Liberal Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

Considering the reputational damage that independents have generally caused to themselves, the rise of the man dubbed the X-man is considered somewhat of a phenomenon. A rampant populist and ­opportunist, Xenophon has become as well known for his stunts as he has for his propensity to change his mind.

Doing a deal with him was once described as like doing a deal with mercury.

His public appeal lies in his ability to present himself like the Democrats used to do — keeping the bastards honest.

He is no political novice. Voters in NSW may have been only vaguely aware of Xenophon. Not so any more. A marginal seat poll commissioned by The Daily Telegraph in May confirmed this. Xenophon is running three candidates in NSW in the lower house — Calare, Macarthur and Lindsay. He is running 18 across the country.

The Galaxy poll suggested the Coalition was ahead in Lindsay by 54/46 two-party-preferred.

This would seem preposterous if the surge in votes for “other” minor parties hadn’t risen from 8.5 per cent at the 2013 election to 14 per cent. The difference is Xenophon. His wacky ­candidate Stephen Lynch — a former butcher and artist campaigning on aircraft noise — may well decide the outcome of the seat on preferences. Based on Malcolm Turnbull’s logic that Lindsay will decide who wins the election, then so too will Nick Xenophon. He is refusing to say which way he will direct preferences. There is little doubt that he has the ability to change the political landscape. At the last election he won 25 per cent of the Senate quota in SA, outpolling Labor and only slightly less than the Liberals.

You start to get a picture of why the Coalition is scared witless of Xenophon and why they have now started throwing buckets of political effluent at him. The Greens, who spent half a million dollars trying to knock him off his perch in 2013, are equally anxious.

The deals now being done to knock Xenophon out of the race are bordering on the perverse. The most aberrant is the dirty preference deal Labor is trying to secure with the Liberal Party to save their hapless Victorian MP and Labor powerbroker David Feeney. The deal goes something like this: the Liberals would preference Labor in Feeney’s seat of Batman to save him from the Greens. In return Labor would direct preferences to the Liberals in Mayo and Sturt to save Briggs and Pyne from Xenophon.

On current polling he stands to also potentially secure three Senate seats in South Australia. He is also half a chance of picking up a seat or two from the east coast states out of the 14 Senate candidates to have signed up to his party across the country. Queensland is a possibility for a Xenophon senator with the ignominious collapse of Clive Palmer.

So suddenly Malcolm Turnbull’s grand plan of cleaning the independents out of the Senate doesn’t look so grand.

The confounding thing about Xenophon is that it is almost impossible to predict which way he will vote on anything. He is the Senate weather vane. The Coalition accuses him of a left-biased voting pattern but he also supported major government policy.

Xenophon may be eccentric and unpredictable but he is also about to become an even bigger thorn in the side of both major parties.