The story starts simply. Michelle Chantelois, a mother of two young boys, had given her husband reason to suspect she’d been having an affair. The husband, Rick Phillips, had tried to phone, write and meet the man,without success. Four years later they chanced to be in the same building. Phillips hit the alleged paramour with a rolled-up magazine, was charged with assault, and then — and only then, to help her now-estranged husband — did Chantelois publicly reveal her claims of a sexual affair.

This was of interest because the man she named as her partner in the tryst was in the public eye, holding a commission from his Excellency the Governor. That man, she says, was Premier Mike Rann. The Premier denies the friendship was sexual. It was, he says, merely “flirty” and “funny”.

“I’ve had to deal with the destruction of my marriage and how my children have had to deal with it, and how Michelle’s had to deal with it,” says Phillips. He measures his words like a pastry chef measuring flour. He is considered. He has had five months of self-imposed silence. He looks across the table, and begins with a question. It is not about himself, nor about Michelle. It is about Sasha Carruozzo, the wife of Premier Rann.

“How’s she coping?” he asks with genuine concern.

“How much pride and how much spin does she have to swallow through this whole thing? She’s probably the only person who’s doing it tougher than me.”

Rann was Opposition leader when he met the attractive blonde working in the Parliamentary dining room. “From what she’s told me,”  Phillips said yesterday, “she’d worked there for quite some time. She said it weird that she was always sent to the Labor Party table to serve drinks and food but never to the Liberal Party table. And he would always come back to her late at night and ask her when she was leaving.

“On the 12th of October 2005, that’s when I first suspected something,” Phillips remembers. “I know that date is for sure because I walked in the bedroom upstairs and she was text messaging, and when I walked in she jumped to her feet and went as red as a beet. I thought, ‘there’s something going on here’, and I rang Telstra the next day to try and find out about the text messages.”

“On the 14th of October 2005 I actually had it confirmed by Telstra — I dialled one of the numbers and it was Rann’s mobile number. I got his voicemail, so I dialled it again, still got the voicemail — then came home and confronted her.”

“She then rang him and warned him that I’d found out about what was going on. The next morning, which happened to be our tenth wedding anniversary, she played me a voicemail message from Rann where he says something like, ‘here’s what’s going to happen … turn your phone off. Sasha will invite you and Rick to a function, you then play the voicemail message to Rick and he’s going to think it’s all above board because we’re inviting you to a function’.

“But the invitation never happened.

“I rang his number a couple of times and thought I was quite controlled in what I was saying. I said, ‘Michelle wants your friendship to continue so as long as your partner knows about it and now that I know about it, why don’t we all get together and have a cup of coffee and discuss the nature of the friendship. By the way you were going to invite us to a function. Why don’t we just get together, have a cup of coffee and come to my house if you don’t want to go somewhere public’. I put in about two or three phone calls and within two weeks he’d disconnected his phone.”

Meanwhile, Phillips kept on writing letters, addressing them to the Premier’s Salisbury electorate office, to the ministerial office in Victoria Square and to Parliament House.

“If I’d known his address I would do what every man would do — you go and confront the guy and it’s dealt with. It’s either dealt with verbally or physically and both parties know well enough to stay out of each others way going forward, don’t they?

“Whereas in my situation, for four years I’ve had to sit and every time I turn the TV on I see his face there. Every time I turn on the radio I hear that beautiful voice. Every time I go and buy a newspaper — I didn’t buy The Advertiser for four years — they’d have his pictures in there. I could not get any closure or any contact with him. That’s been the most difficult thing. You can’t have it out. That’s what is unique about my situation — with anyone else you could go and confront them.”

Then came a night in October last year. Phillips received an invitation to a tasting at the National Wine Centre. It was an enjoyable, relaxed evening, and there is no suggestion that Phillips had any more than a few tastings. He was certainly not drunk, not affected by alcohol.

“We were leaving and someone suggested I pick up a Winestate magazine as a souvenir. Some of the people were peering in the door of the function room downstairs. As I looked in I could see him there.

“I sort of just stood there and thought, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen him in four years — actually 14 days short of four years. Once he’s finished his speech he’s likely to rush out, so I’ll just wait and say something to him when he comes out’.

“I’m just standing, holding the magazine, and when you hold a magazine you generally roll it up. I didn’t turn it into a bludgeon or anything.

“Then he sat down so I thought, ‘OK, I’ll go over to the table and talk to him and just say something to him. I walked past a dozen tables with bottles of wine on them. I mean I could’ve dropped the magazine and punched him, I could’ve hit him with a bottle of wine but I didn’t. All I did was make a statement.

“I said, ‘My name’s Rick and I was married to Michelle’.

“The injury to his face was because I missed. If you’ve got the rolled-up magazine and you’re slapped on the cheek you don’t get a graze, but if you miss and you get the paper cuts from the end of the magazine it’s the scratches.

“I know it’s popular belief that I had super-human strength and that I was kicking and biting and trying to reach for a knife and all those sort of things. Our super hero Barry Harrif, 74 years old, got me in a headlock and then he stood up afterwards and was showing everybody all the scratches from when he attacked me but the scratches he had on his arm were from when Kevin Foley got the wrong guy and attacked him.

“I dropped the magazine and thought, ‘Oh sh-t what have I done? Rann’s likely to have two or three bodyguards here. I’m going to get arms, legs, god knows what else broken if I do anything’.

“Then our glorious Treasurer said, ‘He’s trying to kill the Premier, he’s trying to kill the Premier!”

“I got out and I was sitting on the edge of the paddy wagon and Foley came out and shouted at me again, ‘You tried to kill the Premier’. I don’t think I said ‘f-ck him’ but I said ‘you’re an idiot’.

Foley knew who I was because I’d written him a letter in August 2009 when he and Rann were having a bit of a spat. I wrote a letter saying, ‘Do you want to be South Australia’s very own Peter Costello, always the bridesmaid, never the bride? Because if you have any ambition to be the bride, here’s some letters about the Premier. If you want to do something about it — here it is.’ So I sent copies of the letters and the whole thing.”

It was over, at least that part of it. Phillips was taken to the watchhouse to be charged.

“They put me in a cell and I just had a light shirt on. I laid down on this concrete slab which is cold and I don’t think I had felt as much at peace than I had for a long, long time. I felt that I’d finally started the procedure of closure, if you like. I almost fell asleep in this particularly uncomfortable situation.”

Phillips was not at all convinced then, and still is not convinced today, that Sasha actually did know about the nature of the friendship.

“It’s a matter of public record that my phone bills have been laid out for all to see — or Michelle’s phone bills, should I say. She would contact him five times on a Wednesday, five times on a Thursday, five times on a Friday and he would respond. That was the arrangement — she would text him and he would call because he wouldn’t put anything on paper. Then there were no text messages on Saturday or Sunday, but then back to five and so forth on Monday and Tuesday.

“But Rann states that his wife knew of the relationship and was comfortable with it. Michelle had all the time in the world, running kids around Saturday and Sunday, so when I wasn’t there she could have sent him a text message while the boys were playing cricket or doing whatever they were doing. So the only reason I can think of that she didn’t text on a Sunday is because I suspect Rann couldn’t accept the weekend contact, so therefore his wife didn’t know.”

It has to be said that this is merely Phillips’ own suspicion. When the Chantelois allegations became public, Sasha Carruozzo phoned certain Adelaide media to tell them that she did know of the friendship, and that she did not disapprove.

“No one’s asked in a really strong way, is it appropriate for someone in his position to be having this flirty, funny friendship with a young lady? I mean if we were in school and it was a teacher, let alone the headmaster having a funny, flirty relationship with an 18-year-old student who’s of age, and they were text messaging each other constantly, it would be totally inappropriate. But the man in the highest chair in South Australia flirting with a married woman …”

Phillips sat in the watch house contemplating the night’s events.

“I’d been trying to get Rann to be accountable and answer my questions for four years, so I thought now I’ve actually got all of my questions firmly in the middle of his desk at the front of the pile.

“I was battling psychologically with every instinct that I have and everything that Michelle, my psychologist and my friends would say… battling against my own instincts for four years. I mean it’s a real battle when you just know, but everyone else says you’re crazy and loony because you’re thinking this and you’re thinking that and for the first time within that four years I lay down and I was at peace.”

Phillips finally got back to his Burnside home. It had been quite a night, and it was going to be quite a morning. When he woke up and looked outside, it seemed that every television news crew in Adelaide was encamped in his cul de sac at 7am. Three hours later, news reporters asked Rann if he knew the man who attacked him.

“I’ve never met him before,” replied the Premier.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in The Independent Weekly. For the full version, click here.