• John Spoehr

via The Adelaide Review

02 September 2011Premier Mike Rann spoke to John Spoehr about the Labor leadership, the triumphs, the heartaches and life after State politics, in an interview for The Adelaide Review..

Few political leaders are likely to last as long at the top as Premier Mike Rann. He is a survivor, one of a handful of politicians to have led a major political party in South Australia for nearly two decades and spend nine of those as Premier.

That fateful visit to the Premier’s office by Treasurer Jack Snelling and Shop, Distributive and Allied Trade Union Secretary Peter Malinauskas and the events that followed will probably be remembered as a relatively painless leadership transition in Australian politics. For those embroiled in it, particularly Mike Rann, the wounds of political struggle are not without pain. Reflecting cautiously on the influence of the Labor Right Shop, Distributive and Allied Trade Union and Left Unions on the timing of his departure he says, “we are elected to serve more than the unions”. Ultimately, cuts to public sector employment and conditions over the past few years mobilised unions to campaign for the replacement of Treasurer Kevin Foley and ultimately Rann himself.

Whatever anger Rann might harbour about having been forced to step down earlier from the role of Premier than he wanted, he is clearly not consumed by it. He has just come from a meeting with BHP Billiton, where he was negotiating the terms of the Olympic Dam expansion project and is “very confident” of sign off before he steps down on October 20. He reminds me that the value of the resource is about $1.4 trillion and the expansion project is set to deliver a $30 billion investment. This is the sort of project that you want to finalise and announce before you step down.

The factionally unaligned Mike Rann has managed to steer his way through the political and psychological minefield that is contemporary Party politics. The ideological battlelines have faded to reveal loose factional loyalties, less defined by sharp differences in policy than the comfort of the familiar. Betrayal and sycophancy co-exist with collegiality and comradely good will in both the Liberal and Labor Parties these days. Rann has had to contend with all of this during his political career and he understands better than most how power, circumstances and personalities interact. To survive in politics you must be able to read these dynamics better than most, like a surfer looking out to sea for the best waves to ride and the worst rocks to avoid.

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Image via The Adelaide Review.