A few years back there was a television commercial for Kentucky bourbon which made a virtue of the fact that nobody involved in the operation was “in too much of a hurry”.

Depicting a bunch of insouciant rednecks with their feet up, the notion was that the distillers, distributors and consumers of the brand all took their time – that this was an experience not to be rushed but savoured.

Round here, no-one’s in too much of a hurry. We’ll get there in the end.

I sometimes recall that ad when the State Government starts pushing a new policy barrow. Or, more usually, an old policy barrow that has been made new again.

Because that depiction of the Kentucky distillery nicely distils the essence of policy formulation in South Australia.

Today, we have the release of a discussion paper that will inform a review of the state’s liquor licensing regime. One of its tenets is to reopen the debate about stocking alcohol in supermarkets, a push the Government initially abandoned two years ago. John Rau, the Minister for Vibrancy, speaks proudly (and with some justification) about the efficacy of “minor changes” that have made a major difference to Adelaide’s drinking culture.

“Recent minor changes to the legislation to facilitate small venue licenses have demonstrated that appropriate reform has significant positive outcomes, for both employment and a responsible drinking culture,” says Rau.

“This raises the question as to whether other reforms may be overdue and may have similarly positive outcomes.”

Yup. The so-called “small bar” reforms have been hailed as a success, although they have perhaps become too much a symbol of Jay Weatherill’s SA, lambasted by critics as a political culture of minimal change and maximum buzz.

But while successful, the small bar reforms were a legislative tweak that should have happened about 15 years earlier.

A hallmark of Weatherill’s tenure has been to surreptitiously tackle policy items that have stuck on the state’s collective craw for generations.

Anyone who’d set foot in Melbourne over that period returned speaking wistfully of anonymous laneway bars with unassuming facades that concealed hidden cultural treasures.

It wasn’t always thus: Melbourne’s revolution came after a mid-1980s review by Melbourne University economist John Nieuwenhuysen, whose vision of “European-style liberalization” laid the blueprint for wholesale liquor licensing deregulation.

It was controversial, but within a couple of years of its introduction it was universally acclaimed. And yet, even when pressed, no-one in either party in SA wanted to emulate the Nieuwenhuysen model. That would have meant a fight with the hotel industry, and no-one could be bothered.

Round here, no-one’s in too much of a hurry.

Then there’s the nuclear debate. Sean Edwards’ ostentatious yet evidently sensible submission to the royal commission sets out an approach to capitalise of an industry in which South Australia has an unique global advantage. It’s an advantage the state has never truly seized. When he published the paper he received a call from a former state Liberal heavyweight, who congratulated him and then said: “I wrote almost exactly the same thing 30 years ago.”

Over the ensuing years, instead of capitalising on the resource, the Labor Party has debated whether we should mine uranium at all, and whether there is an ethical difference between operating three mines or four, and joking about hating uranium so much they want to dig it up and get it out of the country ASAP.

In the meantime, the economic opportunities of an expanded Olympic Dam mine came and went, while Western Australia’s mining boom continued apace. In business, as in politics, timing is everything. And round here, no-one’s in too much of a hurry.

None of which is the fault of the current administration, which to be fair has managed to fast-track the policy agenda on a number of fronts. In recent years, the annual Business SA charter has represented a litany of pipedreams and Government gripes. But revisit last year’s document now and it reads like a checklist of Labor Party policies: reviewing the tax regime, including the GST and reducing business taxes and charges; promoting business-led trade missions; leading the nuclear energy debate; abolishing the Office of the Employee Ombudsman.

A hallmark of Weatherill’s tenure has been to surreptitiously tackle policy items that have stuck on the state’s collective craw for generations. Years of wrangling over that infernal Britannia roundabout, which had seen major infrastructure policy solutions in the tens of millions mooted, was solved when a junior Transport Department adviser modestly suggested adding a second roundabout to the bottleneck.

I imagine the scene in DPTI was reminiscent of another old TV commercial, the one where the little Mexican girl solves the village debate about whether to have hard or soft tortillas by venturing: “Can’t we have both?” and there was much rejoicing.

One suspects this was the rationale behind the failed timezone folly, that Weatherill’s policy bent is dictated by years of frustration about debates that have gone nowhere for too long.

Round here, no-one’s in too much of a hurry, historically deadlocked by cultural inertia and legislative gridlock. But that’s a collective policy paralysis that needs to change. And quickly, ideally.

Tom Richardson is a senior journalist at InDaily. His political column is published on Fridays.