Weatherill authority underminded by Rann intransigence

Arkaroola tipped the Right

KEVIN NAUGHTON : From InDaily.com.au 1/08/2011

MIKE Rann’s leadership is stone dead.

Having lost the confidence of the parliamentary party, the Cabinet room and ALP factions, each day that he delays a transition to Jay Weatherill weakens the new leader and jeopardises the party’s broader prospects.

While he hopes the massive mine at Olympic Dam will save him, it was a fledgling uranium prospect at Arkaroola that did him in.

As Indaily reported last Friday, Jay Weatherill, a member of Labor’s left, had received the support of enough members of the Right faction to be anointed as the next leader.

Once such a move is made, those who ache for change are always moved to make it swiftly. Weatherill’s team is unlikely to allow the deal to be put at risk by allowing a cooling off period.

Mike Rann, leader for 16 years, has been holding back the tide of change for almost three years.

The “night of the long knives” in October 2008, led by then ambitious Right faction convenor and Upper House member Bernie Finnigan, failed to hurt Rann’s leadership.

Yes, MPs were fed up with his leadership style, but it was too risky to start changing leaders when the polls were evenly balanced.

But in October 2009 it turned again when disaffected ex-husband of a parliament house waitress whacked the Premier with a rolled up copy of WineState magazine.

Rann’s masterful technique of answering a question that hadn’t been asked was exposed in a crisis that centred on detail and believability.

He said he had never met his attacker, Rick Phillips, and that he had never had a sexual encounter on a golf course.

Both statements were true; but they were not the questions that had been posed.

The damage was done and Rann limped to the March 2010 election where he won, courtesy of party strategist Bruce Hawker shoring up several key marginal seats.

Labor won, but 52 per cent of voters preferred the Liberals.

From that point, Mike Rann’s tenancy in the top job was temporary, as his party went about the process of working out who would lead them to the 2014 election.

The right pushed deputy Premier Kevin Foley aside and road-tested Jack Snelling and John Rau in senior positions.

With Rann still in the top job, the polls continued to slide, but Rann’s supporters still believed he could pull it back.

As he has always done in his nine years as Premier, Mike Rann was looking for symbols that would build his imagery, and if worse came to worse, would define his legacy.

He couldn’t lay claim to the Adelaide Oval – that was first a Liberal policy and then a Kevin Foley initiative.

He had built up a strong portfolio of achievements in renewable energy, but the masses were losing interest in green issues.

And while the Adelaide desalination plant was a big winner when the State was parched from years of drought, it held no value when the State was soggy underfoot.

That left Olympic Dam – the BHP Billiton project that he had been spruiking since 2005 and had expected to be up and about by 2007.

If he can get his name on that plaque, he would at least have a major project to his name – something more than a tram extension in the city.

In what appears to be a contradiction to his Olympic Dam position, Rann also has a passion for European politics and environmental issues – and the proposed uranium mine at Arkaroola presented a fascinating opportunity.

In contrast to Olympic Dam, Arkaroola was a prospect – not an existing mine.

The debate over mining in a wilderness area such as Arkaroola in the far north had raged for almost three years since the exploration company, Marathon Resources, clumsily dumped exploration waste in a shallow pit.

And so it came to be that while his Mineral Resources Minister and Right faction power broker Tom Koutsantonis was rubbing shoulders at the Australian Uranium Conference in Perth on July 21, the Premier was booking a plane to Arkaroola for July 22.

Sources close to Mr Koutsantonis said the Minister was upbeat about the prospects of a go-ahead at Arkaroola, with the appropriate environmental safeguards.

“He was telling people at the conference that everything was fine,” the source said.

“His department officials were of the same mind.”

Also of the same mind, was factional heavyweight Senator Don Farrell, a reported supporter of the Arkaroola bid.

Few appear to have known about the Arkaroola total-ban decision and Indaily understands Mr Koutsantonis was enraged at being told he had to travel to the region with the Premier to announce the mine had been killed off.

Rann had scored his environmental credibility, but in doing so had cut Koutsantonis’s grass.

From that day onward, the talk got louder among Labor’s powerbrokers, incensed at Rann insistence on writing his own script.

With no credible alternative of their own, the Right settled on a deal with Weatherill and Rann was told last Friday.

He denied it Friday night, but then confirmed the arrangement in a statement from India late on the weekend.

But he still wanted some more.

Always keen to write the story he wants the media to run, Rann is insisting that he will mentor Weatherill on how to do the job and then take the biggest prize on offer – ownership of the Olympic Dam expansion deal.

It weakens Weatherill’s authority and the party won’t stand for it.

Rann’s desperation for a legacy has brought him undone on two fronts and the end will come sooner than he hopes.