Sunday will mark a year since the sad passing of parliamentary stalwart Bob Such.

His absence has been palpable in the intervening 12 months, not least during the fraught by-election for his vacant seat of Fisher, which briefly became the epicentre of the state’s political life and delivered a suitably dramatic denouement, with Labor snaring majority Government by a mere nine votes.

And in the calm after that storm, we’ve felt his absence in other ways: no more reams of notices of motion for private member’s bills on esoteric topics about which Bob felt strongly, which would delay the vacuous sound and fury of Question Time to the growing dismay of political reporters on tight deadlines. No more knowing shakes of the head at the latest factional spats within his former Liberal camp.

In the years since he left the Liberal Party, Bob Such flourished politically, as did Labor. They both knew when and how to take their chances.

We can only wonder at what might have been had Bob not been struck down by a brain tumour in those dramatic days after last year’s state election ended in a hung parliament.

Steven Marshall could be forgiven for pondering it endlessly.

Geoff Brock was leaning towards supporting the Liberals, who had a vastly superior two-party vote. Its conceivable that under those circumstances Such could have been convinced also.

If Bob was still with us, we wouldn’t of course have had that game-changing by-election in Fisher. But nor would we have had a corresponding one in neighbouring Davenport, where Liberal stalwart Iain Evans instead would be contemplating his third decade in public life and enjoying a career highlight as the state’s Treasurer.

If Marshall had been anointed Premier, its likely he would have hit the ground running; instead his Liberal Opposition has spent much of the ensuing 18 months in a collective exhalation of breath.

Labor would not have Jay Weatherill leading it with his canny political nous; he would surely have moved on, or been moved on, and the party probably would have exploded into a factional spat as the right sought to reclaim the spoils of defeat.

They negotiate better. They campaign better. They know when to seize the half-chances political fate throws their way. But have they governed better?

In any case, such ‘sliding doors’ reminiscences are neither here nor there, but that they remind us of two important things. First, the indelible influence Bob Such had – and would have continued to have – on the state’s public life. And second, that in politics, there is often nothing separating success and failure but the vagaries of chance. And that is why Labor has learned to take its chances.

Weatherill was in a car to Port Pirie within minutes of learning of Such’s illness, to lay out a case to Brock that he had no choice but the throw his lot in with Labor.

If Marshall had cause to feel he let a golden chance slip while he gave the independent a respectful distance, it was (as it so often is with the SA Liberals) a case of history repeating. When the party was first thrust into Opposition in 2002, the chance was still there to hang onto power by its collective fingernails. In not kowtowing to their ousted maverick Peter Lewis, the Liberals effectively sent themselves into Opposition. They naively and arrogantly assumed it would only be for a term. It is now four and counting.

Rann would not have survived another election loss, even such a heartbreakingly narrow one. Could Kevin Foley have taken the ALP to power four years later? We will never know.

Sliding doors.

Labor should honour Bob Such by governing with purpose.

So confident did Labor become in its dealings with independents – having weathered Lewis’s stormy tenure as Speaker, replaced him with Such and roped in Karlene Maywald and Rory McEwen to cabinet – that when the fate of its Government last year rested with two crossbenchers, party insiders were immediately jubilant.

“We negotiate better than they do,” one said.

They negotiate better. They campaign better. They know when to seize the half-chances political fate throws their way.

But have they governed better?

While Labor has laid everything on the line more than once in its pursuit of power, it has rarely demonstrated the same desperation in the wielding of it.

This year’s tax review threw up significant changes, but not the fundamental structural reforms businesses were calling for. The proposals detailed in its initial options paper – taking an axe to payroll tax and stamp duty and replacing it with a broad-based land tax – were given short shrift, despite the Government’s own paper insisting conveyance duties were “generally considered to be one of the least efficient taxes levied by the state” and “another tax on property is generally considered most equitable” alternative.

Similarly, its recent dalliance with timezone change was abandoned at the first sign of political intransigence.

It’s fair to say much of Labor’s policy agenda would not have won warm support from the late Bob Such; his widow Lyn has been an outspoken critic of the Transforming Health agenda, which will see the closure of the Daw Park hospice where he spent his final days.

But it would be appropriate, as we remember Bob’s political legacy, for Labor to recall just how close it came to losing the opportunity to govern. It now has two and a half years left to do so with the same desperation it showed when it sought to hold on to power.

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