Isobel Redmond – the MP whose leadership sank in a milking bucket – has drowned her credibility in a bucket of mud, delivered under the protection of parliamentary privelege.

It’s a low point in state politics where issues of jobs, economic development and family hardship should be to the fore.

Instead, Redmond, now a political recluse, used the privilege of unfettered debate to slam an incumbent Lord Mayor’s reputation, claiming Stephen Yarwood is “unfit for office”.

Her attack was then followed up by Liberal colleague Michael Pengilly’s impassioned plea that voters in Burnside not endorse a particular candidate.

Both attacks came just two months after Liberal Leader Steven Marshall slammed any endorsement or otherwise of local government candidates.

“We haven’t had State Government intervention in local government or lord mayoral elections for 30 or 40 years,” Marshall told FIVEaa’s Leon Byner in August.

His comments followed a positive endorsement of Yarwood by the Premier, Jay Weatherill.

“I don’t think that there’s any role for state politics in the lord mayor’s race, I don’t think it’s a good development,” Marshall said.

If that’s the case, then what would he call Isobel Redmond’s damnation of Yarwood?

Privately, Liberal MPs are fuming at the Redmond outburst, as it took media attention away from the Auditor-General’s annual report and his criticisms of government, and the other big story of the day – corruption.

Redmond is a mere shadow of the woman who was handed the Liberal leadership in July 2009 because she was a viable antidote to then-Premier Mike Rann’s popularity.

Her colleagues had overestimated her capacity to run a full campaign and when  it got tough in the final few weeks of the 2010 election , she actually went missing for a couple of days.

Senior Liberal colleague Rob Lucas covered for her as staff and friends searched for Redmond who, it turned out, had “gone for a long drive”.

After losing an election in which an angry ex-husband’s assault on Rann had gifted her a sex scandal, Redmond’s grip on the leadership was always tenuous.

READ MORE: Redmond says Yarwood “unfit for office”

At the 2012 Royal Adelaide Show, after a celebrity milk-off, she famously said that if she became Premier she would cut 25,000 jobs from the public sector.

While the cow seemed happy, the voters turned their back and her leadership was shot.

Finally, after a long period of speculation, on 31 January 2013 Isobel Redmond walked out of a party conference and vacated the leadership – she hasn’t spoken to the media since.

Seven years ago, Redmond was the hard-working Shadow Attorney-General who went toe-to-toe with A-G Michael Atkinson as they shared the massive workload of presenting and debating most of the important Bills in parliament.

The 2013 meltdown suggests that perhaps leadership was never her gig.

No-one begrudged her the right to sit silently on the back bench.

But the personal attack on Yarwood, more than a year after the alleged altercation happened, is unforgivable.

Would she say it outside the protection of parliament? Would she repeat these lines?

“I would call him unfit to hold the office.”

Redmond’s beef related to their joint attendance at Government House function in 2013 where she was running late and had made a “provocative” comment about traffic delays and council roadworks.

“I do not deny that I intended it to be provocative,” she told parliament Tuesday.

“The Lord Mayor launched an attack unlike any I had ever experienced—and believe me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have experienced some!

“The attack, which deteriorated to just an unending torrent of verbal abuse continued right across the six-lanes of King William Street, across the slip lane, through the front gate where I just smiled at the guard as the abuse continued, and all the way up the gravel drive literally to the front steps of Government House, at which point he stopped and we went our separate ways,” she claimed.

“Make no mistake, when I say ‘abuse’, I really mean abuse. Without putting too fine a point on it he called me, amongst other things, ‘an effing c’.

“I will let you put in the expletives. That was what showed me the true make of this man whom other might regard as ‘affable’ but whom I have studiously avoided contact since that day.”

On that point, Yarwood’s not alone.

Redmond concluded with a second-hand story that the Lord Mayor had earlier that day ended a “press conference with him pushing a camera out of the way”. It’s a story that no-one else has related or confirmed.

Yarwood spent last night and most of this morning defending the massive slur.

“I would never call anyone that and I can say that on public radio because no-one will be able to call in and say that I have called them that,” he told radio stations.

“Got to say that just didn’t happen and it’s really sad that people can make such statements in Parliament.

“I have actually said nothing provocative to anyone I’ve ever spoken to in the last four years as Lord Mayor.

“I’m an urban planner who wants to get outcomes for the city of Adelaide and I could’ve sworn my job was to actually motivate people to work together to get outcomes to make a great city.

“It’s certainly very sad and really unfortunate that these claims have been made because they’re simply not true.”

Redmond says the clash happened as they crossed six lanes of King William Street. Did she perhaps mishear? Was she still angry at the traffic delay and why did she decide to open the conversation with Yarwood with her own provocative statements?

And why, oh why, has she waited for more than a year to bring it up via the protection of parliament?

I’ve worked with Redmond and I’ve known Yarwood for more than four years (and we’ve gone toe-to-toe on some touchy stories). I’ve never seen or heard anything from him that suggests he would have said what he’s alleged to have said.

It was a low blow to a man in the middle of a Lord Mayoral election campaign.

It should be retracted immediately and the walls of state parliament cleaned to remove the mud and grime that overshadow the real issues.

Update: Lord Mayor Yarwood has made a formal approach to the Speaker of the House of Assembly, asking to exercise a right of reply. Speaker Michael Atkinson has referred the request to the Standing Orders Committee.

The “right of reply” was introduced in 2010 “to provide an opportunity for any member of the South Australian community to seek to have adverse references to them made in the course of
the proceedings of the House of Assembly corrected in the Hansard (the publicly available transcript of debate).

It does not allow the Lord Mayor to speak to the parliament.