If I were a voter in South Australia right now, I would be mightily pissed off. About 18 months ago, PM Malcolm Turnbull inflicted one of the longest federal election campaigns ever on this country with a double dissolution. Voters in all states were compelled to go to the polls and elect (or re-elect) 12 senators as well as MPs for the House of Reps. I loved it. Got me elected.

Two of those senators elected in South Australia were that true-blue Liberal Cory Bernardi and maverick Nick Xenophon. Both for six years.

Within months of being re-elected, Bernardi scored a cushy sinecure (at taxpayers’ expense) with a secondment to the United Nations where he seemed to spend much of his time hanging out with Donald Trump supporters.

When he got back, he announced that the Liberal Party was too liberal for him and he jumped ship to sit on the crossbench as founder (and sole Senator) of the Australian Conservatives.

Bernardi didn’t resign his Senate seat, and let the Libs appoint another senator. He just took their seat and “re-badged it” (to use a Xenophon term).

And speaking of Nick: he won a six-year term on July 2, last year. SA voters voted for the NXT (the Nick Xenophon Team) but they were really voting for Nick personally and the other two South Australian senators came along for the ride — the way a lot of Australians voted for Pauline Hanson and her coat-tails pulled in Rod Culleton (now gone from Western Australia) and Brian “Boofhead” Burston in New South Wales and Malcolm (soon-to-be-gone) Roberts — Mr 77 votes — in Queensland.

[Senator (soon to be Mr) Malcolm Roberts perfectly represents One Nation]

Now, less than 18 months later, Xenophon announces he’s going home. He’s quitting the Senate to go play in the South Australian state election next year as a small pond powerbroker/kingmaker/self-promoter.

What about the other four and a half years he was committed to serve as party leader and voters’ representative as a crossbench wheeler and dealer in the Senate?

Forgeddit, as the Americans would say. But Nick, whom I will be sorry to see leave the red benches, has form on this.

His first political coup was to finagle enough preference deals to get his anti-pokies platform an upper house seat in Adelaide. That was supposedly for eight years but, within two, Nick X announced that stage was too small and too insignificant for him.

Now he’s giving his Senate supporters the bird.

At least, if somebody leaves “the other place” in a hurry (as Deputy PM and National Party leader Barnaby Joyce may soon have to do) at least the voters get to have their say at a byelection.

[If Barnaby Joyce goes (and he could well be going), the government could fall]

In the Senate, there is no such opportunity. Shortly after Cory Bernardi betrayed his party, and his voters, he rose in his seat to talk about principles.

It was so hypocritical I had to join in: “To hear him stand there talking about principle, after he stood as a Liberal candidate and was elected by the people of South Australia as a Liberal candidate, is a joke.

“I want to go on record to say that I find it appalling that this has happened.”

I pointed out that if somebody in the lower house changes their philosophy or opinion and does not like their party’s principles any more, they should resign their seat. (Are you listening, Mr. Abbott?)

They can then go back to the people at the resulting byelection and say: “This is who I am, this is what I stand for now” and test their standing in the by-election.

Unfortunately, in the Senate, that doesn’t apply and, personally, I don’t believe that is the most democratic way to do things.

And, to finish up back on South Australia: I haven’t even mentioned Lucy Gichuhi who was a Family First afterthought, following Bob Day’s expulsion, and who decided to take the Senate seat as an independent when her FF party nabobs decided to throw in their lot with Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives.

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I mentioned Malcolm’s marathon election campaign — which took him within one seat of losing the keys to The Lodge. The fledgling Justice Party started campaigning four months before the PM called that election. We covered 11,250 kilometres in the Justice Bus in Victoria and country NSW.

I promised that, if elected, I would go back to rural and regional centres every month. Not just after an election had been called.

We have been to many including Wangaratta, Shepparton, Beechworth, Inverloch, and Melton. This week, by train and car, our team has been to Bendigo, Swan Hill and Mildura. I have talked to local police chiefs, the mayors and councillors. Every night we have honoured The Ode at the local RSL

I have a word of warning for the Turnbull team. Your guys scoffed last year when I reported back that disgruntled “rusted-on” Liberal voters were scared and angry about changes to superannuation.

This year (and leading up to the federal election) it’s power prices. Nobody wants to talk about anything else. Domestic electricity bills are sapping families. And business too. I even got bailed up by a medium-sized businessman in McMahon’s Point on Sydney’s north shore last week who said his power bill is now $700,000 a year. You can’t cover that by just increasing your own product prices.

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Travel note: was surprised, and encouraged, by the number of new vineyards springing up from Bendigo to Mildura. Happy to report that a glass of shiraz from Heathcote can compete with any wine in the world. Trentham pretty good too.