BY LESLIE RICHMOND
ADELAIDE — It is a received wisdom that a week is a long time in politics. If your idea of politics is bounded by parliament, boardrooms and the editor's office, it would certainly seem so. In South Australia in October the usual round of media massaging has been disrupted by one of those parliamentary upheavals that has everyone quite excited, until it becomes clear that nothing has changed.
On October 19, John Olsen announced his resignation as premier. His resignation came after an inquiry into government dealings with Motorola found that Olsen, while industry and trade minister under former premier Dean Brown, had done a deal on the quiet to give the communications giant a contract to provide new police communications equipment if it established a new software centre in Adelaide.
The inquiry by Dean Clayton QC found that Olsen — together with former senior public servant John Cambridge and former Olsen advisor Alex Kennedy — had given "misleading, inaccurate and dishonest" evidence to a 1998 inquiry into the Motorola affair which had exonerated Olsen from any "intentional" misleading of parliament.
In the best traditions of the Westminster system, Olsen, refusing to accept the findings of the inquiry, declared he was stepping down "for the sake of the party", and went on to attack the report and vow nebulous legal revenge to clear his name.
"If I've been guilty of anything, it's been bringing jobs to South Australia", he sniffed.
The government is now headed by former deputy premier Rob Kerin with Dean Brown as deputy.
The Liberals' line now is that this is a government of unity that will be able to overcome tensions within the party. But the reality is an uneasy truce between bitter factional rivals who, in their willingness to undermine each other, have shown even less concern about good governance than usual.
As for the Opposition, beyond its baying in the bullpit of parliament, it has done little more than push for an election to be called immediately — purely in the interests of the people of South Australia, of course.
Labor leader Mike Rann's statements about the "dishonesty of this government" overlook the fact that the government's actions were born of pandering to business, an activity which Labor is desperate to get in on.
Rann and his ministry-in-waiting have been uncritical of any of the corporations involved in the issues dogging the government — Hindmarsh stadium, Motorola, power companies. They have given no guarantees about their relations with corporate interests. And they have made no commitment to the openness in business deals which would mark a true democracy.
This is all just spectacle: after the excited flashbulbs and breathless commentary dies down, the tatty facade of parliamentary "democracy" remains unchanged by such "crises".