Bad news catches up with Good-News-Mike

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Rann scuppered below decks

KEVIN NAUGHTON : OPINION (Source InDaily.com.au)

MAN the lifeboats – the ship is sinking and we are three years away from the nearest port.

It’s all over for the Rann Labor Government and recent activity shows the transition is already under way.

Firstly, the polls are unshakeable.

The election poll of a year ago showed a 7.8 per cent swing away from Labor and dissatisfaction with its leader Mike Rann.

The trend was repeated in the Sunday Mail poll last month and confirmed in the historically accurate Newspoll last week.

Secondly, the power brokers know it’s over.

They removed some of the rubble (Treasurer Kevin Foley) and installed contenders for the top job in high-profile positions to see how the electorate might warm to them.

John Rau as deputy, Jack Snelling as Treasurer, were the choices of the powerful Right faction and Jay Weatherill remains the choice of the less powerful Left.

Thirdly, the staffers started to look for better pastures.

Paul Flanagan, a Rann loyalist and media unit manager, has headed to a PR role at BHP Billiton while Rann’s number one media strategist Jill Bottrall has settled into a less stressful role in the department after taking a two month holiday.

These are the signs of a group that’s being dismantled.

The final step in the process is the removal of the Premier Mike Rann.

Very senior Labor people have told Indaily it will happen, but the timing is changeable.

Rann himself appears to be the only person yet to recognise the inevitability of the process of change, launching into high rotation media appearances ever since the Sunday Mail poll.

It had all the usual hallmarks of his one-dimensional style; attaching himself to good news, good times and good people.

But as Newspoll showed, not even a month of festivals, a week of Lance Armstrong nor Holden’s new car launch and a record grain harvest could change the key numbers.

Seventy per cent of voters don’t want him.

He believes he can reverse the trend, but if he couldn’t do it in the benign political atmosphere of March, then he can’t do it at all.

The political reporters will also be his enemy. They can see a political necking coming and they won’t let up until it happens.

Meanwhile the State Liberal leader Isobel Redmond says she wants to remain a small target while “Labor implodes”.

That’s fine, but what’s the Lib plan when a new Labor emerges?

The Good Ship Rann has been deserted by its crew, but there’s a new liner on the horizon by the March 2014 election.

It will be fresh, have new hospitals rising up on the old railyards, expressways to open and the AFL about to step into a new Adelaide Oval home.

Jay Weatherill is sleeping contentedly below deck.