Rann a poll model for PM

ON March 20 South Australia and Tasmania are holding state elections. However, federal interest will be focused more on what happens in SA.

ON March 20 South Australia and Tasmania are holding state elections. However, federal interest will be focused more on what happens in SA, where the contest has many parallels with what is happening in Canberra.

It will be quite the David-and-Goliath showdown: all the power of the state and the media control of the government up against an opposition strapped for cash and where discipline is held together by a thread.

Like federal Labor and Kevin Rudd, SA's government and Labor Premier Mike Rann have been popular for a long time, maintaining a significant lead in the polls.

But more recently voters are taking a critical look at what the government has achieved. The opinion polls have tightened; the latest Newspoll has the government leading on the two-party-preferred vote 53 to 47 (another had it at 51 to 49). Previously Labor was in front 57 to 43.

Just as federal Labor has struggled to keep attention on its policy agenda since the pink batts debacle and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's largesse for free-to-air television networks, the state government's ability to stay on message has been hampered by allegations Rann had an affair with a former parliamentary barmaid, Michelle Chantelois.

Rann has long been seen as a role model for the way Rudd has approached his leadership: attendant to the politics of spin while also prepared to take a lead hand as part of an intervening government. The management of the state's media has been nothing short of ruthless. Journalists unkind to the government have been shut out while those who provide more positive commentary are rewarded with the drop on breaking news. It is the side to political spin the public doesn't much like but rarely gets to see.

New Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond is a political novice, elected to parliament in 2002 and made leader a little more than eight months ago. The former lawyer and mother of three admits that she became Liberal leader by accident when former leader and factional ally Martin Hamilton-Smith had to resign following his use of forged documents to attack the government. (Former federal opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was similarly damaged by his reliance on a fake email in the Oz Car saga.)

Redmond's plain-speaking style is similar to that of new federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. And just as federal Labor is doing with Abbott, Labor in South Australia is trying to paint Redmond as an economic risk.

The economy looms large as a campaign issue.

Along with Tasmania, SA lags behind other states on most national economic indicators. Its share of the national economy has declined from the levels Labor inherited in 2002. Its share of gross domestic product is below the national average. Business investment is relatively sluggish and its population share is declining, with growth rates slower than all other states except Tasmania. On the face of it, this sounds like a recipe for removing a government.

The Liberal Party wants to use these indicators to condemn Labor as having failed South Australians during its eight years in power. As is often the case in politics, the situation isn't that simple.

On each of the above indicators the rate of decline in SA was substantially higher eight years ago than it is now.

In other words, while Rann hasn't managed to transform the state from an economic laggard to a miracle economy, he has made important headway to improving long-term prosperity.

"The challenge that I put to people [when I was first elected] was that we needed to get confidence back," Rann tells The Australian. "None of us were prepared after having been in opposition for so long to preside over genteel decline. That meant that we needed an honest assessment of the state of the state and we published it."

That honesty has endured in the form of a strategic plan, an independent assessment of how South Australia is travelling that is regularly updated and released for public consumption.

The opposition argues it is just another exercise in government spin, but the fact it reveals Labor isn't achieving everything it sets out to do -- tackling high youth unemployment, for example -- suggests spin isn't the only thing to which Rann is committed.

Not that unemployment is a wider problem for the Labor government in SA. Its recently achieved overall unemployment rate of 4.4 per cent is the lowest of any state and is a credit to Labor's preparedness to support a rapid expansion in the state's mining industry as a means to create jobs and stabilise the economy.

Announcing the election campaign on the weekend, Rann identified his close working relationship with the federal government as a key reason SA won more than its fair share of commonwealth funding.

Some commentators poked fun at the remarks: party political ties dictating where commonwealth funds were directed.

But Rann is making the point that for a state such as SA, dependent on industries such as manufacturing that are beholden to federal policies, including tariff levels, close links to Canberra are vital.

"Two big pillars of what we have been doing were [one] to win defence contracts. In the last 5 1/2 years we have won $44 billion worth of defence projects," Rann says. "And the other thing that we were incredibly underdone in was in terms of the mining industry. We put money into partnering with the mining industry."

The granting of a new uranium mining licence in SA is something of which Rann is especially proud.

The opposition is coming from a long way behind at this state election thanks to a poor performance four years ago. Liberals hold only 14 of 47 seats in the state's lower house; they need a substantial 10 per cent swing to form a majority government, or 6 per cent to create a hung parliament where they would have some chance of governing with support from the cross benches. These include Karlene Maywald, a Nationals MP who is a minister in Rann's government but who has indicated she may join forces with the Liberals after the election.

The Opposition Leader needs to think big to convince voters to deliver it a majority. "This is a fork-in-the-road moment for South Australians, it really is," Redmond tells The Australian. "We can't afford another four years of Labor. Issues like water security are too important to put this government back into power."

Both sides of politics have committed to desalination as a means of securing Adelaide's drinking water, but there are still enormous differences between the parties when it comes to how to handle stormwater run-off and the ever-present dilemma of being the downstream state for the Murray-Darling river system. Although the river issue should play into Rann's narrative of being about to work closely with federal Labor, the problems with national water policy is an issue on which the opposition thinks it can capitalise.

Water security is undoubtedly an important issue, but it is not clear that the public is yet prepared to trust the opposition with the reins of power after four years of debilitating internal factional warfare. The polls have tightened, suggesting the momentum is with the opposition.

The betting agencies highlight that the smart money is on Labor being returned to government (according to Centrebet a Labor win pays $1.17, a Liberal win $4.65). However, it is likely some of that money was put down before Redmond started to make her mark.

Redmond acknowledges that factional division has long been a problem for the SA Liberal Party, personified at the federal level by the continuing conflict between senator Nick Minchin's protege, senator Cory Bernardi, and manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives Christopher Pyne.

The tension has been such that Turnbull, because of his closeness to Pyne, found it hard to maintain a strong working relationship with Minchin, his Senate leader.

But, as with Redmond's federal colleagues, now that an election is imminent, factional differences appear to have been put to one side. "I don't think we have had any appearance of disunity since I have been leader," Redmond says. (Abbott would say the same). "The troops are in lockstep. Yes, historically we have been a factionally divided party [in this state], but I have never seen myself as being from one side or the other."

The usually straight-talking Redmond is from the Right, and was supported for the leadership by Minchin and other hardliners in a bid to keep well-known moderate Vickie Chapman out of the leadership when Hamilton-Smith fell over.

But she is an unusual conservative in that she is soft (not in the pejorative sense) on law and order issues while also being progressive on gender issues.

The government has attempted to exploit her strong advocacy for the role of rehabilitation in incarceration policies as some sort of indicator that she is weak on policing, an example of low-grade spin if ever there were one.

"There are very clear policy differences between the parties, more so than at any time in the last 20 years, and as it happens we have got two very different personalities leading the parties to argue the case," Redmond suggests.

"I couldn't spin to save myself. People prefer facts than spin. Mike Rann is a master performer, I take my hat off to him.

"Anyone who could go out after that Channel 7 story [denying his affair] and face the media and talk about defence contracts is an absolute master.

"My strength is knowing what I am about, what the state should be doing and how to get there."

From someone who's not into spin, those are some craftily worded lines.

The likelihood is that the opposition will look to run a presidential-style campaign, keeping the focus on its leader, whom polls show the public trusts significantly more than the Premier. In contrast Labor will try to sell its team as better placed to govern, something Rann was keen to promote when interviewed.

The question some South Australians may be inclined to ask is: Why does the Premier even want another four years running the state? He has publicly committed to serving a full term if re-elected.

It is unusual in modern state politics for someone as experienced as Rann, with eight years as Premier under his belt and 15 as Labor leader, to seek a third term.

"I think I am about the same age as John Howard was when he was first elected," Rann points out.

Does that mean he has another 11 years in him?

"No," is his quick reply. But he has unfinished business.

While Rann was already charging at full tilt towards this year's election before the affair allegations surfaced, part of his unfinished business must now surely be to hang around long enough so that when he does depart from politics it will be on his terms, with his government's track record the focus of people's attention.

And why not? On balance his government has been a pretty good one while the opposition has been a confessed rabble.

That makes this election crucial to the legacy of the man on whom Rudd has chosen to style his political persona.