‘Moving on’ to a seat of power

MARTIN Hamilton-Smith says he wants no lectures from the Liberals.

Former South Australian Liberal and Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith holds a press conference with Premier Jay Weatherill to announce he has resigned from the Liberal Party.

FORMER Special Air Service commando Martin Hamilton-Smith has always had a healthy dose of self-belief. As a top soldier, businessman and politician he has been driven all his life by ego, ambition and a vision he firmly believes must be implemented for the betterment of South Australia.

At 60, facing 16 years in opposition, he yesterday made the only play he had left to realise his long-held ambition of once again sitting around a cabinet table.

His defection from the Liberal Party into a Labor cabinet stunned his colleagues and political observers, but the former opposition leader had been considering the move since his party’s shock election loss in March.

Hamilton-Smith yesterday told The Australian it was true he had jumped at the opportunity to serve as a minister again, having had a three-month stint as tourism minister in the dying days of the Kerin Liberal government in 2002.

“When I came into parliament I was financially secure; the money and chauffeur-driven cars do not motivate me. What motivates me is to serve South Australians within government,” Hamilton-Smith says. “I’ve given 17 years of my life to the Liberal Party and done everything I could humanely do to bring change to the party.

“I was given an opportunity to move on and I am doing so.”

He insists he has “moved on” from the bitterness brought about by his own demise as leader and a sense of betrayal he had felt.

“I don’t want to attack the Liberal Party but I won’t be accepting any lectures from any Liberals about unity, teamwork or loyalty,” Hamilton-Smith says.

“I am simply looking to the future. The choices are to spend the next four years, and possibly eight if we don’t win the next election, throwing stones at the Labor Party and pointing the finger, or as an independent Liberal, trying to effect change from within the Weatherill government around the cabinet table.”

He says the decision has been one of his toughest and he has paid a high personal price, having lost many friends yesterday.

“I think Jay Weatherill genuinely wants a Liberal conservative voice around his cabinet table,” Hamilton-Smith says.

Sources close to Hamilton-Smith say one of the main factors driving his defection was being shut out of Opposition Leader Steven Marshall’s inner circle.

“Steven Marshall has chosen Vickie Chapman, Iain Evans, David Ridgway and Rob Lucas as his leadership group and is taking his advice from that group — that group determined the election outcome,” a senior Liberal MP says. “Martin is an ideas person and needs to feel he is central to any leadership team. His advice has not been listened to.

“Put yourself in Martin’s shoes. He is frustrated by a lack of ideas, a lack of vision and an unwillingness to radically change what has been a losing formula.

“He looked at spending what would be 16 years in opposition and decided that is not how he wanted to spend the rest of his political life. He wanted a voice in cabinet, and he’s got it.”

But any number of Liberals are devastated by what they see as the ultimate betrayal.

One of Hamilton-Smith’s most loyal supporters, backbencher Mich­ael Pengilly, says he feels let down. “There are any number of us who feel betrayed,” he says.

“I have a huge amount of respect for Martin for his ability, but the choice he has made means that for the rest of his life he becomes a rat, and that is the sad part of it.

“No one saw it coming and we went out of our way to support him in pretty torrid times, and I am just in disbelief.”

The most senior South Australian Liberal, federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne, a strong supporter of Mr Marshall, called Hamilton-Smith a traitor to the party.

“Martin Hamilton-Smith will go down not as a fighting leader of the Liberal Party who believed in things but as the greatest traitor to his political party in the history of the state,” Pyne says.

“Everyone respects someone who fights the good fight and loses; no one respects a political traitor. Labor MPs will be laughing at Martin Hamilton-Smith behind their hands when he is in the room and laughing out loud at him behind his back.”

Head of politics at the University of Adelaide, Clem Macintyre, says Labor is getting the best parliamentary performer across to its side and “buying some credibility with the small business and defence industry sectors”.

“Labor has shored up its numbers and it is characteristic of Labor’s astuteness in how to play politics and win — and it’s characteristic of the Liberals to be caught short,” Macintyre says.

“There is no surprise that Labor was chasing any number of Liberals but it is a surprise that Martin Hamilton-Smith was so willing to go. The Liberal leadership group was probably not working hard to keep him in the tent, thinking they did not need to.”

Macintyre says the defection potentially will create an even more venomous and dysfunctional parliament.

“There is still an enormous challenge for the Labor government, even with the extra votes they’ve now got, to win in 2018,” he says. “But Labor is now relatively safe on the floor.

“The Liberals do now really need to see off some of the older underperformers and get in some young blood with serious talent.

“Labor will be stronger with Hamilton-Smith on board, there is no doubt. He will bring a welcome voice into their cabinet.”

Weatherill said yesterday that the offer to Hamilton-Smith “hasn’t been taken lightly on his side or ours”.

“(The deal) is the same arrangement that was entered into with Mr Brock,” he said.

Geoff Brock is an independent MP for a conservative regional electorate who also was given a ministry in return for backing Labor to ensure it could form a minority government after the March election delivered a hung parliament.

It is not the first time Labor in South Australia has enticed conservative MPs to shore up a minority government.

Peter Lewis was a former Liberal who turned independent and similarly shocked the state by changing a hung parliament into a minority Labor government for Mike Rann in 2002.

Lewis was made Speaker in return for his support, with Rann later winning backing from two more conservatives, Rory McEwen and Karlene Maywald, who became ministers.

The defection of Hamilton-Smith means the fourth-term Labor government now has 23 seats and the support of two independents in the 47-seat lower house of the state’s parliament.

Marshall has described Hamilton-Smith as a traitor, saying he was the fourth Liberal approached by the ALP in a bid to shore up “this hopeless, tired, dysfunctional” government.

He did not try to hide his anger, after Hamilton-Smith had attended a shadow cabinet meeting and Liberal Party branch meetings on Monday but gave no indication he had met the Premier ahead of yesterday’s announcement.

The Opposition Leader was at the airport to travel to New Zealand yesterday to talk about its economy recovery plan when he got an SMS from Hamilton-Smith telling him about the upcoming announcement.

“Martin Hamilton-Smith sat in the shadow cabinet meeting yesterday, gave no inkling, sat there received the papers, spoke to various papers that were in our partyroom, privy to all our strategies, it is a massive act of betrayal,” Marshall said, adding he had thought Hamilton-Smith was a man of integrity and a good friend.

While the defection had been a “body blow”, he said the party would pick itself up and hold the government to account.

Labor had made similar unsuccessful approaches to Hamilton-Smith’s colleagues Steven Griffiths, Duncan McFetridge and Pengilly.

Former Labor minister Tom Kenyon, who narrowly retained the seat of Newland at the March 15 election, had been tasked with approaching Hamilton-Smith. Kenyon says he has a good relationship with Hamilton-Smith, with the pair having travelled together on trade delegations to the United Arab Emirates, China and India.

Within days of Weatherill securing the support of Brock to form a minority government, Kenyon made his approach to Hamilton-Smith.

“The more votes we have on the floor the better,” Kenyon says.

Kenyon says they met in a cafe three or four times and had several phone calls in between, with a suspicious Hamilton-Smith wanting to make sure the approach was ­serious.

Kenyon’s final call on Sunday secured Hamilton-Smith, with the former Liberal leader committing to meet Weatherill on Monday.

At the meeting Hamilton-Smith signed his agreement with Weatherill, which guarantees supply and confidence, and allows a degree of autonomy.

He even attended his electorate of Waite’s sub-branch’s annual general meeting that night, where his wife, Stavroula Raptis, was elected president of the Mitcham branch of the Liberal Party.

The leafy eastern Adelaide electorate of Waite is a blue-ribbon seat Hamilton-Smith has held since 1997.

Waite is staunchly Liberal and his defection is unlikely to go down well with constituents.

Hamilton-Smith says he plans to return to his electorate and explain his actions to his constituents, and hopes for their support when he stands again in 2018.

Former Liberal upper house leader Michelle Lensink says no one had anticipated his decision.

“I never thought I’d regret not having poisoned one of my wedding guests,” Lensink says.

“For those of us who stuck by him when the shit hit the fan, it’s incredible really.”

Senior Liberal MP David Pisoni describes the move as “a totally selfish act”.

Federal Liberal MP and fellow South Australian Jamie Briggs says the SA Labor Party is so clearly out of talent it is having to reach into the ranks of the Liberal Party to fill its ministry. He has warned Labor that Hamilton-Smith cannot be trusted.

“The decision that Mr Hamilton-Smith has made smacks of self-interest and is based in treachery,” Briggs says.

“Any future dealings with Mr Hamilton-Smith will be undertaken with this indication of his character at the front of mind. I feel for the grassroots party members who have served him faithfully for years and have now been betrayed.”

Others, including independent MP John Darley, raise parallels with Hamilton-Smith’s military career as an SAS commando before he became a small-business owner running a string of lucrative childcare centres.

“I thought if you did that in the army, you’d be shot,” Darley says.

From both sides now

December 1, 1953: Born in Adelaide

1975: Graduates from Royal Military College, Duntroon

1976: Unsuccessful attempt to resign commission to join the British Army

1978: Officer with 6th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment and Special Air Service Regiment

1994: Embarks on business career in property development and childcare

1997: Wins seat of Waite

2001: Appointed cabinet secretary by premier John Olsen

2001-02: Minister for innovation and tourism under Rob Kerin

2007: Becomes leader of the opposition after challenging incumbent Iain Evans

2009: Replaced as leader by Isobel Redmond

2010: Deputy leader of the opposition

2012: After unsuccessful challenge to Redmond, returns to backbench

Yesterday: Resigns from Liberal Party to join Labor government as Minister of Trade, Defence Industries and Veterans’ Affairs