(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

A late-night coup, an economy on the brink and a government that effectively condones corruption. As Crikey asked yesterday: is South Australia becoming a failed state?

For those not across the intricacies of SApol, this week has been a doozy. Near midnight on Tuesday, rebel Liberal MPs joined forces with Labor to oust speaker Josh Teague and replace him with Liberal turned independent MP Dan Cregan.

Days earlier Cregan had created his own turmoil by abandoning the Libs after earlier suggesting he was quitting Parliament altogether. The act of political savagery, made even more sinister by the fact that it happened just before midnight, has been described as a kind of guerilla warfare, or in Aussie terms, the ultimate “dog act”. 

“It’s a mess,” political analyst at Flinders University Rob Manwaring told Crikey.

“A lot of these issues have been simmering away for a very long time. But what we don’t know is how this is going to play out in terms of instability.”

From one brawl to another

The same conservative defectors to oust the speaker have also sided with Labor to back a conflict-of-interest inquiry into the next most powerful person in the state, Attorney-General Vickie Chapman, over her refusal to back a port at Kangaroo Island where she has property interests. 

Observers say the tussles are more of the same political infighting that kept the party in opposition for 16 long years. But the factional warfare has heated up under the moderate Marshall government, which has moved to decriminalise abortion and introduce assisted dying legislation, angering conservatives.

With an election due next year, the question is whether Premier Steven Marshall has lost control of his party, and indeed the Parliament.

But beyond economic instability and political infighting there are concerns about the way in which the state is being governed. Job figures this week confirmed SA’s unemployment rate rose to 5.1% last month, the highest in the nation.

Misconduct and maladministration

As Crikey previously reported, last month SA MPs unanimously voted on a bill that would strip the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) of its powers to investigate misconduct and maladministration, despite some MPs voting on the bill being targets of ICAC investigations.

This drew a blistering rebuke from ICAC commissioner Ann Vanstone QC, who told a parliamentary hearing it was the ultimate conflict of interest, and such a bill would shield politicians from scrutiny and ultimately allow corruption to go undetected. 

Manwaring says while the state on the whole was still fairly stable from a democratic point of view, there were genuine concerns about governance, with constitutional decisions being rushed through and a considerable underrepresentation of women in Parliament.

Whether or not the state is really turning into a banana republic, it’s shocking stuff in the lead-up to an election.

“The government should be cruising to a pretty comfortable second term,” Manwaring said. “It’s kind of breathtaking — in part because we’ve only had a Liberal government for a few years.”