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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-11-30 Daily Xml
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RANN, HON. M.D.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (17:32): I move:

That this council observes and records the true achievements of the former premier, the Hon. Michael Rann MP, and the true extent of his legacy for the state of South Australia.

In moving this motion, I want to put on the public record that this is not a motion of Family First; this is private members' time and this is totally my motion.

I was not going to move a motion to talk about the Hon. Mike Rann until one Sunday night a few weeks ago when I was listening to ABC Radio National and an interview with him just before he finished his period as premier. I felt that some of the history he was writing in that interview of 16 October 2011 needed to be corrected because at some time in the future someone will look at the record of achievement of the former premier. I want to spend a little while now on how I see those achievements.

To give credit where it is due the former premier, the Hon. Mike Rann, did achieve certain things for South Australia, as you would expect that anyone who was in that position of premier for nine years would achieve. One of the biggest achievements that I think the Hon. Mike Rann will be noted for is the fact that he did bring the Labor Party out of oblivion or the wilderness—whichever way you like to describe it—after the 1993 election. He did drive the Labor Party from a defeat, where there were only 10 seats for Labor after the State Bank debacle, and managed to turn that around to a point where, only a short time after, due to the sad tragedy of Joe Tiernan, he had picked up one seat and then had a cricket team. From there he really did start to focus on rebuilding the Labor Party.

I suggest that, had he not really been in that position at that time, the Labor Party may not be sitting here in government, having had 9½ years in office with at least another two and a bit years to go. What really did annoy me was that the premier said basically that the state was a rust-bucket state when he came into office. That is actually far from correct. In fact, it was a rust-bucket state when the premier was former minister for tourism in the Bannon-Arnold government and they lost office in 1993.

There is no doubt that it was a rust-bucket state then, but to give no credit whatsoever to eight years of effort by the then Liberal government—and all members of parliament, whether they were Liberal, Labor, Independent or crossbench or whatever—and basically be prepared to rewrite history to the point where you are saying that this state was a rust-bucket state in 2002, is simply unacceptable to me.

Members get varying opportunities in the parliament. A lot of it depends on the cycle at the time, the seat that you happen to be given if you are in the lower house, how you are seen by the factions of the major parties, then just how opportunistic you are and I guess a bit of good fortune along the way. All members of parliament come in here to do their best. All members of parliament do achieve but, as I said, some can achieve more because of their position.

I just could not believe that anyone could project such an ego as the former premier did during this interview, to the point where I think he actually believed that he single-handedly turned this state around. That is simply not true. On the subject of the rust-bucket state, David Penberthy wrote earlier this year in The Punch:

With the Crows celebrating their 20th anniversary, it is worth reflecting on the Adelaide of 1991 and the Adelaide of 2011.

In 1991, Mike Rann was a minister in the Bannon government.

In 1991, Adelaide felt like a boarded-up backwater and SA the rustiest of the rust-belt states. In the same year the Crows entered the competition, the State Bank had collapsed, exposing the taxpayers to a $3.15 billion debt.

He then went on to say:

Given the high unemployment and low levels of growth and investment, this figure seemed insurmountable. As Victoria clawed its way out of its own economic mire, we remained stuck in ours, and were dealt a further psychological blow with the news that we would be losing the Grand Prix, most gallingly to Melbourne...It was a time when South Australia had little to feel good about. It was a time when, in Adelaide, it also felt as if there was nothing to do. The arrival of the Crows helped change that. This flash, cashed-up club gave South Australians something to rally around.

I put that there because that was the true picture of where the state was up to when Mike Rann and the former Labor government left office, and that was when South Australia clearly was a rust-bucket state.

If you try to google and reference clippings for 'South Australia rust-bucket state between 1998 to 2002', you will have a difficult job. You will find a little bit there from Rex Jory, but he is really talking about the State Bank and the basket-case state as a result of that. There is no way that the premier can claim, given what I am about to talk about, that it was a rust-bucket state until he took over, because a lot of work was done between 1991 and 2002.

Premier Rann was clearly not very happy to be told to go early, and he certainly didn't go quietly. He capitalised on his final 10 weeks to run all around the countryside making announcements and doing whatever interviews he could. It appears that he is determined that history books will tell his story of Mike Rann's legacy. As I said, there were quite a few things that the premier did do over that time that were good. All governments need to do good things; that is why people elect them. As was said to me when I was a minister and a bit excited about one piece of capital works once, 'Don't expect to get re-elected on that; the community expect you to deliver those projects.' Of course, in delivering those projects, there are a lot of ministers involved.

Whilst there was a problem for the Rann government from early on when it was always talked about as a government of three—mainly premier Rann, Kevin Foley and Patrick Conlon at that time—there were other ministers in that government. Those ministers did put an effort into their portfolios and they had a part to play in the good things that the Rann government provided for South Australia, as did the backbenchers, the whip and others that were also part of the team. In fact, had those backbenchers not won their seats, clearly Mike Rann would not have had the opportunity that he had for a very long time.

To my way of thinking, he did not actually give credit to his own party for the commitment and guarantee that they gave him. I understand that in 1993 the Labor Party, in caucus, committed to give Mike Rann two terms to become premier and that there would be no leadership spill during that time. So, where is the credit from the premier back to his team? You do not hear the former premier even talk about a team in any of this interview at all. I find that disappointing for the Labor Party and for South Australia, because we could have capitalised a lot more had the premier embraced a team rather than a single style, as he went on to develop further and further during his time.

The former premier also said, in part of this interview with Julia Baird, that he wanted to talk about Don Dunstan. He said that he moved to South Australia in 1977, working for Don Dunstan. From there on, he basically wanted to model himself around Don Dunstan. One of the first things the premier did when he came into office was to rename part of the Festival Theatre complex to the Dunstan Playhouse, I think it is called. That is one of the first pieces of history that needs to be corrected.

Most South Australians believe that it was Don Dunstan that was the architect and guru behind the Festival Theatre complex, but the fact of the matter is that it was actually premier Hall. He was out of office by the time it was open and, sure, then Dunstan opened it. Part of the re-writing of history from premier Rann was his claim that Don Dunstan built the Festival Theatre, and he didn't; it was premier Hall, and these facts need to be clearly in the record.

He then went on to say that he wanted South Australia to be a laboratory for social change, and said, 'And you've got to see it in the context of 30 years of Tom Playford as premier; 28 years of incredible conservatism. So, there was also a sense of dam bursting, as well as a very passionate reformer.' When it comes to social inclusion and opportunities for South Australia, I think we probably desperately need some conservatism right now.

Let us have a look at the history and what Sir Thomas Playford actually did provide. I will just rattle a few of them off: a real South Australian Housing Trust, which, among other things, built Elizabeth and, with that, the capacity to build the Holden motor vehicles and foster General Motors Holden into South Australia. This is something we are still doing very well today and, I am confident, into the long-term future.

Under Mr Rann's time as premier, we saw a significant reduction in public housing. We saw a change where it is not even called the Housing Trust any more; it is called Housing SA. We saw a waiting list go to over 20,000 people thinking that at some stage they are going to get affordable public housing. Sadly for them, they are not going to, because the stock has been reduced so much under premier Rann's years in office.

We now see Housing SA mainly using its stock for mental health situations, drug addiction situations and the like rather than supported accommodation for those people to help rehabilitate them and then get them into public housing and become independent and, at the same time, doing what Sir Thomas Playford did, and that was to ensure that people on low incomes had the chance of affordable public housing.

Sir Thomas Playford was responsible for the big state visionary picture work: the Morgan to Whyalla pipeline; pipelines all over the state; and power grids all over the state. He was the first premier to push for the very uranium mining that Mr Rann sought to mark as the hallmark and legacy of his reign, even though he violently opposed it in his early Labor days and wrote documentation and talked about it as a mirage in the desert, and did everything he could possibly do to stop the uranium mine—and then he demanded that he negotiate the final sign-off in Melbourne a few days before he finished as premier.

I raise those points because in looking at the record and in looking at history correctly, premier Rann is on the public record as saying that he wanted to set up small viable satellite desal plants around Eyre Peninsula. That would have been quite a strategic and commendable infrastructure project. He intended that he would be 'turning the pumps off on the River Murray that go to Eyre Peninsula' so that there would be less reliance upon the River Murray.

Of course, instead of that we ended up with a 100-gigalitre desal plant which he and his government opposed for a long period of time. That was to be a 50-gigalitre desalination plant but, after a walk one night with his friend, the then prime minister Mr Rudd, they decided to double that—with little science—and now we see a problem in this parliament and this state when it comes to the cost of water.

One of the things that I felt sorry for premier Rann about was the way that he was finally dumped out of office, given that he did return the Labor Party to a situation of being in office for nine years. There was a question about this put to the premier during the interview with Julia Baird. She stated:

Well I'd like to come back to the ideas that you did implement as Premier, but first let's talk about where you're at today.

You've had almost a decade at the realm. Yet you've resigned just shy of the 10 year mark. On July 29 this year you were asked to step down as Premier. Were you surprised that happened?

This is what the premier, Mike Rann, said in response:

Well being that the people who'd asked me to step down had just recently asked me to stay on, so this is basically a fractional power play within the Labor Party involving the Shop Assistants' Union being at odds with another part of the right in South Australia in order to combine with, it's all very [strange], with the left and so on.

But ultimately, I mean was going anyway. I wasn't doing a John Howard and staying on regardless. The agreement was, that in fact that I'd initiated, that I would step down in March of next year, so on the 10 year mark, to give the new person two years to settle in and also, of course, to mentor them, a bit like Peter Beattie did to Anna Bligh, which I thought was a perfect, seamless transfer.

And it's interesting that, in a sense, we've been seeing a bit of that around the country with people who are not elected actually making these decisions.

And I think that whilst factions can be good in terms of, you know, a left and a right, two wings of a party—the same with the Liberals, they have the wets and the dries. But it's really important that the central purpose be the state or nation first, government second, party third and factions last.

What's happened is that the factions, I think, are becoming kind of patronage, perks, lurks and positions machines where they'd rather reward people, sometimes in terms of pre-selections for safe seats or for places in the Upper House—this has been over a long time, but I think it's getting worse in both parties—in order to, you know, rather than going out and getting the best talent available.

Again, you do not hear the premier recognising the talent even in this house; rather, the former premier is indicating that there is no talent in this house. Julia Baird then asked him, 'You've been unaligned throughout your career?' The former premier said:

Which is almost unheard of. I've had 17, well I've been in Parliament for 26 years, a frontbencher for 22 years, Leader of the Labor Party for 17, and I've never been a member of any faction because I don't like being told how to think.

Those are his comments. Julia Baird then asks, 'Was it your undoing in the end, though?' This is the answer from the former premier:

Well I think, in a sense, I was the victim of a factional power play that really didn't involve me. It was about, in fact, that the person who was the greatest casualty is the Deputy Premier, the one they asked me to mentor, John Rau. And I think that, you know, it could have been done a lot better.

I think that what the former premier did not say there was that the right is on the way out in the Labor Party now and the strength is with the left. The premier was then asked, 'Did you get angry?' to which he replies:

Oh absolutely. I'm a human being and human beings get angry. But I'm not known for being angry or bad-tempered. But I think it was the leaking of the meeting that was supposed to be confidential, the deliberate leaking, that most people found contemptible. And the people involved are contemptible.

I find that interesting because, to get the history right, one of the reasons the left moved with the right to get rid of the former premier was the arrogance and the threatening way he went about his business. Without naming the people (I would not do that because I respect them and they are important South Australians), we knew as politicians what was going on.

If an organisation or organisations, for example, wanted to buy a page in The Advertiser condemning the government on a decision or a policy, they could be out riding their bike on a Saturday morning and the premier himself would ring and threaten them like you would not believe. We saw the same with the media with, 'Have you been Bottralled lately?' I find that sort of behaviour quite interesting when the premier says that he is not known for being angry or bad tempered—just talk to some of the leadership people in this town and you will discover to the contrary.

Julia Baird then asked, 'What did they,' that is, the factions, the SDA or whatever, 'actually say to you?' Mike Rann replies:

What they said was that is in order to, you know, that they'd changed their mind, they didn't, that the Right had changed their mind, that they didn't think that, that they were now not backing John Rau. They'd decided to support the Left's candidate. And so it was a reversal of a position that had been put to me repeatedly.

He does acknowledge the fact that he did not have any problems with the new Premier, but if you listen to the whole interview he was not a happy person. Asking about the last election, Julia Baird said, 'But wasn't there also a swing against the seats of many of the key ministers?' to which premier Rann replied:

We did much better than we expected. You've got to think about it. Look at Dunstan's record and Bannon's record. The third election that we won, that I led, was the best third term election result in history. So clearly not. We had a net loss of two seats from the biggest majority ever. So I'm getting people ringing me up from all over telling me what a fantastic result it was.

So here is the premier again basically taking all the credit—no doubt he was a master at marginal seats, no doubt they outclassed the Liberal Party like you would not believe. If the Liberal Party does not win the next election, I will say that it is the fact that this government today still has seven marginal seats that the Liberal Party does not win.

To give credit where it is due, as a political tactician, and as someone who was very good in the area of marginal seats—albeit that we are now paying the price for that with the AAA credit rating, which I will talk about in a little while, and the fact is, if you want government, you want it at all costs, so you throw everything at it to hold or win those marginal seats—former premier Rann can claim some credit for that because he blitzed the Liberal Party at the last election in those marginal seats.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: What about the dodgy how-to-vote cards? Do you know about them?

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Yes, and I know—that's what I said; I know about the dodgy—

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: —how-to-vote cards, but I am saying—

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Dawkins is out of order, and you are out of order responding to interjections.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Sorry, sir, I will not respond.

The PRESIDENT: Moving right along, now; move along.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: There is a lesson there, if you want to get into government—

The PRESIDENT: I am trying to give you that lesson.

The Hon. T.J. Stephens: What's the lesson? Cheat?

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: No, the lesson is to work the marginal seats with tactics; that is the lesson. I totally condemn what happened with the dodgy how-to-vote cards, but I am saying that on this occasion he can claim credit because he did hold seven marginal seats, even though there was a 52.5 per cent vote approximately for the opposition. It is all about marginal seats.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: It is all about marginal seats; that is what it is about. It was cold comfort to Jane Lomax-Smith, but I guess she had done her job for premier Rann.

I would now like to discuss the AAA credit rating and a few other things, because I think this is important for the record. Julia Baird asked the former premier a question about the state of South Australia, stating, 'a lot of Australians are still uncertain, especially those that don't live in your state, about what actually happened,' to which the former premier replied:

We changed the state. Now we had the lowest unemployment in the country during the GFC. We've got record jobs growth, record employment growth. We've doubled the amount of money that we've spent on health. We got thousands of more nurses, more than a thousand more doctors, more than a thousand more police. Crime has gone down every year.

I want to try to get this history right: yes, there has been an increase in the number of doctors, nurses and police, but that is something people expect you to deliver, particularly when you have growth budgets. The fact is that, over those nine years when Mr Rann was premier, the budget over doubled. If you have a budget that is over double, you should be able to provide more services. These were golden years for economic boom, but my point is that the former Liberal government did a lot of the hard work in setting up that new foundation to provide these opportunities; it was not all done by premier Mike Rann. Former premier Rann goes on to say:

When I was elected we were the rust bucket state. It was what people called us. No-one says that now.

I want to reinforce that it was not a rust-bucket state in 2002. Look at the housing industry figures of 1997, '98 and '99; that is history that you cannot reinvent or rewrite on a radio program or in a book. The fact is that all of the growth in the housing market was starting to trend the right way in 1997, and by 2002, when Mike Rann managed to win office, the hardest of the work had been done.

Let me put the AAA credit rating into perspective. I find it interesting that some of the media have bought into former premier Mike Rann's line, and that of former treasurer Kevin Foley, on the AAA credit rating. Again, go back through the history books: technically, yes, the AAA credit rating was reaffirmed to South Australia during the time of the Rann government, but the work to achieve the AAA credit rating was done in the years of the Brown-Olsen governments, and that is the true history.

It is ironic that, just a few weeks after former premier Mike Rann left office, the new Premier came out to soften South Australians and prepare them for the possible loss of that AAA credit rating. I think that is significant to the true history of where Mike Rann took this state because, when Mike Rann was a minister in a Labor government, they lost the AAA credit rating. Those are the historical facts and here we have now, a few weeks after, the new Premier, obviously concerned about the financial situation of the state, indicating that we may end up without a AAA credit rating.

So, the history says that there was a doubling of the budget and they actually presided over a state as part of a nation where we had some of the best economic growth in our history. I would suggest that, after the Playford era—and I am 54 now and I know that that set up opportunities for all of us baby boomers—the strongest economic time we have ever seen was set up and occurred under the time Mike Rann was premier and what have we got to show for it? I seek leave to conclude my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.


[Sitting suspended from 18:01 to 19:47]


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