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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-11-13 Daily Xml
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LABOR PARTY

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:28): I want to talk about the division and disunity openly occurring within the Labor government and amongst Labor MPs as we near the end of this four-year term and lead into the March 2014 state election. I refer, in particular, to a recent article by Mr Michael McGuire who, of course, Labor MPs will know was a former senior Labor adviser and insider who knows Labor MPs and staffers very well. This particular article starts:

One calls it 'bizarre', another calls it 'amateur hour'. It's the response by two senior Labor MPs who, like many of their colleagues, are perplexed by the litany of political mistakes and stuff-ups by Premier Jay Weatherill in his response to a terrible case of sexual abuse at a western suburbs primary school. The Advertiser has spoken to many Labor MPs, across the factional divide, who are now questioning Mr Weatherill's judgement and his tactics over the past year, concluding he has made a bad situation immeasurably worse, giving the issue a momentum and media focus it did not need to have and turned it into a problem that may end up costing the government March's elections.

Many of his colleagues felt when the rape was exposed 12 months ago that Mr Weatherill needed to 'blow up' the Education Department, deliver a mea culpa for himself and his government and promise to fix things up. Instead, he responded by saying 'ultimately the decision-making process fell to a school council, which was informed about the matter.' 'This could all have been nipped in the bud very early,' one said—

this is an MP—

'Jay and his office have handled this appallingly and now it's not going to go away.'

The mistakes listed by Labor MPs include Mr Weatherill's decision not to sack his personal staff, which has now been interpreted as a double standard after a ministerial staffer was suspended this week when accused of leaking an election strategy. Then there was his initial deflection of blame, his handsoff approach to a dysfunctional Education Department, declining to front up to the select committee investigating the matter, allowing the perception to build that the government was hiding something and the lack of any apparent strategy to solve the problem.

Added to the mix was Mr Weatherill's public advice to staff not to attend the select committee hearings, even though they could be compelled to turn up and did so yesterday, and Attorney-General John Rau's letter to the committee warning it could be in breach of an obscure 1917 law if it criticised findings of the royal commission, headed by former judge Bruce Debelle, which investigated circumstances surrounding the rape at the western suburbs school.

Along the way Mr Weatherill has also alienated many powerful members of the Labor caucus. For a variety of reasons in the past year he has fallen out with Jack Snelling, Paul Caica, Russell Wortley, Patrick Conlon and his one time closest ally in state parliament, Grace Portolesi. There is no suggestion caucus would move before the election, but Mr Weatherill is fast running out of [his] friends. 'If we lose, at five minutes past six on election day he will be gone,' one MP said.

The Hon. Mr Wortley, who has joined us now, will know, because he is one who is openly critical of Mr Weatherill—publicly and privately. Anyone who visits the cafes of North Adelaide will run into people who have had discussions with the Hon. Mr Wortley where he has been very unfavourably disposed towards Mr Weatherill. The corridors of Parliament House are rife with reports of conversations with the Hon. Mr Wortley, and indeed with the others in that particular list as well. However, the Hon. Mr Wortley talks—and talks often—in relation to his views on the Premier.

This is the dysfunction, the disunity that we have within the Labor government at the moment. We have Labor MPs openly briefing former Labor staffers and journos in The Advertiser about their disunity, about the dysfunctionality of the government under Premier Weatherill, and the fact that they say that if he loses, at five minutes past 6 o'clock he will be gone and out of here. This is the supposed government that is asking the people of South Australia to trust it, to re-elect it for, in essence, a 16-year term; another four years on the base of these past 12 years.

These MPs hate each other so much, their staffers hate each other so much, that they are openly rebelling in relation to these issues. The Sunday Mail and the media named Mary-Lou Corcoran, a Labor staffer, as a source of the leak openly intended to cause grief to Premier Weatherill. That was almost five or six weeks ago now, and there has been no mention yet as to what has happened. Is she still on leave on full pay? Has she resigned? Has she been sacked? What are the circumstances? That is the dysfunction that we have. As you would well know, Mr President, if you cannot run yourselves as a party you cannot expect the people of South Australia to vote for you to run the state of South Australia.

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