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SUBJECTS: SA Labor Leadership Coup

Christopher Pyne: From a federal perspective obviously we’re seeing a re-run of the knifing of a political leader a-la Gillard and Rudd but just not effectively done.  There is a saying in the Mafia that if you go out to assassinate an opponent you don’t want to wound them, and what Jay Weatherill and Jack Snelling and Malinauskas have managed to do of course is to wound Mike Rann without removing him as leader. 

So now we have a lame-duck Premier that we know the Labor Party doesn’t want to have there, we now have a training wheel premier-in-waiting in Jay Weatherill who the Labor Party basically don’t have any confidence in otherwise they would put him into the job immediately, and we have the South Australian public left like spectators watching this factional blood sport on display and I imagine wondering what the hell is going on and I’m with them. 

Amanda Blair: Did you hear what Michael Owen was saying from The Australian was saying though, he was just saying why hasn’t Jay and maybe Peter Malinauskas gone in and say right that’s it, job’s over pack up your desk it’s time for me to go in.  Like from a strategy perspective why hasn’t that happened because Michael left me hanging with that one and I’m going, oh good I don’t know what’s going on now.

Pyne: Well I think the Labor Party factional bosses have underestimated Mike Rann.  I think the Labor Party factional bosses knew their man in Kevin Rudd and knew that if they tapped him on the shoulder he would go and they also knew that Gillard would be prepared to swing the axe, whereas with South Australian politics Mike Rann isn’t prepared to be tapped on the shoulder.   He was elected for better or worse last year and has indicated he wished to serve out his term and that’s what the South Australian public expect and of course they have in Jay Weatherill a premier-in-waiting who is prepared to wound but not to kill and I think this is displaying all the reasons why Jay Weatherill in spite of being a nice bloke simply doesn’t have what it takes to be the Premier of one and a half million people.

Blair: When you do it though, because I think it’s unrealistic for anyone to think, even you, Christopher Pyne – I think it’s unrealistic for any of us to think there isn’t this jockeying for positions in political party’s on both sides, even in the Greens.  That’s what happens.  People want to be leaders, some people have a different agenda and we’ve seen that play out in your own party quite brilliantly between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott.  And the Liberal Party here had a couple of years where they changed leaders quite often before they felt comfortable with Isobel Redmond.  So I think it’s unrealistic of us to think that this sort of stuff isn’t going to happen.  But the point is at some point they have to solidify don’t they?  They can’t leave us hanging here can they?  They can’t leave us hanging. 

Pyne: The Premier was elected for better or worse in March last year.  There’s a huge difference between the Leader of the Opposition being changed when they’re not being seen to cut through with the South Australian public and a Premier who’s been elected with a mandate to govern being removed by his own factional bosses – as Michael Owen said, a 30 year old factional boss going in and telling the Premier, who’s been elected by the people, that his time is up.  Quite frankly its offensive and it’s offensive to the South Australian public. 

Blair: Why is it offensive? Because he’s a 30 year old?  Malinauskas is the leader of the right faction. 

Pyne: It’s offensive because he’s not in the Parliament.  It’s offensive because the South Australian public should be the people who choose whether the Premier stays or the Premier goes, not an unelected union official.  The fact that this is so publicly on display just makes a mockery of South Australia as a democracy.  You don’t get the people on the Liberal side from the non-parliamentary party determining who the leader of the Liberal Party will be and for the Labor party to allow factional union bosses to order their members around and particularly order the Premier around should offend every South Australian who voted at last years election. 

The people are sovereign, not the Labor Party.  And for the Labor Party not to be able to see that only highlights out of touch they’ve become from the South Australian public. 

Blair:  What do you think will happen now?  If you were playing Cluedo politics style, where would you move Mike Rann to now?  He’s in the Billiard Room at the moment, where would you put him? 

Pyne: I think Colonel Mustard, who survived the initial attack with the candle stick in the Billiard Room is racing to the cellar.  And you’ve got to admire Mike Rann’s tenacity.  As Michael Owen said, he’s a smarter politician than Jay Weatherill or Jack Snelling or any of these other pigmies in the Labor Party who’ve tried to remove him and my sense is he’s in the box seat. 

Blair: And he’ll just do whatever he wants. 

Pyne: And the South Australian public are the losers from this whole process. 

ENDS