Now that’s he’s overseeing a ministerial office, albeit a minor one, Martin Hamilton-Smith likes to sneer at the petty politicking of his former Liberal colleagues.
He mocks across the chamber: “Do you know what the Government is interested in? We are actually interested in the health of veterans and the health of the aged. We are not interested in playing politics.”
Perish the thought.
Conversely, of course, the Opposition is “more interested in the health of the Liberal Party than they are in veterans’ health”.
It’s a novel insult, as I’m not sure too many people within the Liberal Party could be accused of being overly interested in the party’s health for much of the past three decades.
The thing is, though, back when he was Liberal leader Marty was hardly averse to petty politicking himself. In fact, he made an art form of it.
He dubbed former Transport and Infrastructure Minister Pat Conlon “the Minister for Stuff-Ups”, and insisted on repeating the refrain at every media appearance. Hilarious, no?
So what similarly stinging epithet would a Martin Hamilton-Smith-styled Opposition Leader coin for a minister in his position today?
The Minister for Amiable Consensus? The Minister for Moral Manoeuverability?
How about the Minister for Diminished Expectations?
The fact is, Hamilton-Smith was an effective Opposition Leader, or at least he would have been, had his team been willing to die in a ditch for him, rather than determined to push him into said ditch.
He had energy, ideas and chutzpah.
Pallaras was entirely untested in the political arena, and the notion that he could be shoehorned into an Upper House seat and parachuted directly into one of cabinet’s most senior roles is frankly silly.
There are those among his former colleagues who still believe he would have become Premier had he not chosen to resign despite winning a partyroom ballot by a single vote (Isobel Redmond had no such qualms when she held on by one after MHS and Steven Marshall challenged her in 2012.)
He wasn’t to know, of course, that a fellow named Rick Phillips and his infamous rolled-up Winestate magazine would soon turn the 2010 electoral contest on its head.
But these days, Marty appears more of a middlebrow middle-manager in a Government that has tolerated, rather than embraced, him.
His portfolios largely keep him out of harm’s way, with only Defence Industries thrusting him anywhere near controversy, but even then he seems stuck repeating soundbites while the adults get on with business.
The Premier sings his praises, but in truth what Premier wouldn’t sing the praises of someone who so enthusiastically promotes everything you do and has no possibility of ever challenging for your job?
As Minister for Moral Manoeuvrability, he has gone from determinedly championing the rebuild of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital on its existing site to po-facedly defending Labor’s health regime.
He has gone from vowing to fight for the Repat to arguing that its closure is in the best interest of veterans.
It goes without saying that somewhere on his crusade against Labor’s wasteful economic management he turned the horse around, and now fully embraces the ALP’s legacy, at least publicly.
The one-time Minister for Stuff-Ups (© M.Hamilton-Smith) was no shrinking violet when it came to doling out the political insults; Conlon used to disdainfully refer to the wild plans and grand designs pursued by his nemesis as “MartyWorld”.
Mind you, many of those wild plans and grand designs have since been pilfered and implemented by Labor, among them a city football stadium, a riverbank precinct rejuvenation and a desalination plant (which Marty nicked from Iain Evans in the first place).
But MartyWorld wasn’t so much a policy, or a place, as it was a state of mind.
We had yet another insight into MartyWorld today in a story by Nigel Hunt, persistently The Advertiser’s greatest asset, who revealed that Hamilton-Smith tried to engineer a plan to bring recently-departed Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras into parliament to be Attorney-General in an inevitable Liberal Government.
(The ‘Tiser, incidentally, has previously blithely labelled Marty a “traitor”, even insinuating that he should be taken out the back and metaphorically shot, but such trifles evidently don’t bother the Minister for Moral Manoeuvrability, especially when there’s occasion to have a crack at his former colleagues. Anyway, I’ve found over the years that when it comes to taking offence, Hamilton-Smith is cut from the same cloth as Ned Flanders, of whom Homer Simpson once bemoaned: “Aw that’s it, you just can’t insult this guy! You call him a moron and he just sits there, grinning moronly.”)
Anyway, there were a couple of small flaws in the Pallaras plan: no-one on the Liberal side was interested, there was no vacancy on the Liberal ticket and the Liberals never formed Government.
Marty’s rationale is somewhat different: “I think if either Isobel or Steven had the political courage and backbone, they might have got Stephen Pallaras and that would have been a big help to them during the election.”
“I think he would have added a real depth of quality to our debates,” he told Hunt.
That may be true; Pallaras always thought outside the square on law and order issues and he was, as MHS puts it, “a straight-shooter”.
But the major flaw in the plan was that it was just a lousy idea.
Pallaras was entirely untested in the political arena, and the notion that he could be shoehorned into an Upper House seat and parachuted directly into one of cabinet’s most senior roles is frankly silly.
Given he was at loggerheads with the Labor Government for much of his seven-year stint and his contract was not renewed, it could be too easily portrayed as sour grapes, and that’s assuming the notion was only floated after he vacated the office. To countenance such a switch earlier would be considered highly inappropriate, although perhaps not so much to someone who so seamlessly flits from the Liberal inner sanctum to the Labor frontbench.
Marty is a great case study in will to power, but he is largely, it seems, powered by revenge.
It would be sad, in a way, to presume that irrepressible, fire-and-brimstone Liberal leader would have been content toiling quietly away in low-key ministries in a Government whose ideological bent he has long derided, but one can’t help but think he justifies every working day with the thought that he had the last laugh over his former colleagues … at least until they roll him in Waite in 2018.
He couldn’t resist a (somewhat justified) dig at his old foe Christopher Pyne, musing that the moderate powerbroker was underwhelmed with the Pallaras brainwave because the former DPP “would be someone he couldn’t control”.
“Why would he give up a place to someone in the Upper House who wasn’t going to obediently do whatever they were told?’’ Marty scoffed.
Fighting words. Especially from a former firebrand now seemingly content to do just whatever he’s told by colleagues for whom he will only ever be a convenient insurance policy.
Among his obvious gifts – and equally obvious flaws – the Minister for Moral Manoeuvrability is also a master of self-justification. These days, he’d have to be.
Tom Richardson is a senior journalist with InDaily.
