If you have a very big tinny and want to chase monster snapper off Port Pirie, then Geoff Brock is about to float your boat.

You see, a bigger, better, deeper boat ramp, one able to “provide access for larger craft” in Port Pirie, was one of the baubles that Jay Weatherill traded in return for the vote of the Independent Member for Frome.

The boat ramp is high on the list of nine capital works projects that the Weatherill-Brock government will deliver to the Frome electorate. The list includes new irrigation gear for the Pirie golf course, a right hand turning lane on the Spalding Road access to the Clare Aerodrome, relocating the palliative care service in Pirie, improved road lighting for Snowtown, and a safer drop-off zone for the Gladstone Area School.

All worthy projects, to be sure, although you might well wonder why it takes a looming constitutional crisis for a government to drag out the cheque book for rural voters.

The lack of half-decent infrastructure in regional South Australia is a disgrace.

In almost every country town, local projects are not delivered by the state government, or even the regional council, but by the local “progress association”.

The progress associations hold raffles, collect empty cans and bottles and generally beg and borrow to stump up the cash for facilities like netball courts, playgrounds, swimming pools or pontoons for learn-to-swim classes.

On Yorke Peninsula, you will hit a progress association roughly every 20 kilometres. Ardrossan, James Well, Rogues Point, Pine Point, Port Julia, Curramulka, Port Vincent, Stansbury, Edithburgh, Coobowie – on and on they go as you drive down the foot of the peninsula.

So, good on Geoff Brock for screwing some cash for his electorate from the government, even if it is a vague shandy of existing and re-directed resources and some new dough.

The biggest bauble, however, the absolute humdinger, is not even mentioned in the public version of the Weatherill-Brock deal. That is the state government’s $350m underwriting of Port Pirie’s Nyrstar smelter upgrade.

In a deal done over a pizza in Pirie, the taxpayers of SA will now carry the financial risk of an overseas-owned zinc smelter.

The government is being coy about the precise details of this guarantee.

Just like the naughty bits in Cleo, it is in the adults-only, sealed section of the compact with Brock and in parliament this week the Premier refused us a peek.

Word is that because of the complexity of such a massive underwriting, the state may need federal help to administer it, even though it lets the feds off the hook from risking their cash on the venture.

In an interview on our program, Premier Weatherill even attempted to argue the Nyrstar guarantee would not show up on the state budget papers. It will, as a huge liability, in the back of the book, where all the sexy stuff is buried.

So if you think Geoff Brock is a bit of a country yokel, think again. He has cut a brilliant deal for his home town.

Only now, as the fog of war has lifted, is it possible to appreciate the sheer genius of the deal Premier Weatherill has negotiated with “Brockie” to secure the ALP minority government, a fourth term and the likelihood of 16 unbroken years of Labor rule.

For starters, the agreement “to support stable and effective Government” is between Jay and Geoff. Not between the ALP and Geoff.

If the Right faction hold any romantic notions of rolling the Premier as revenge for his humiliation of soon-to-be ex-Senator Don Farrell, they can forget it – unless they want a spell in Opposition.

And what is the purpose of the Weatherill-Brock agreement? Good question. The deal says the primary purpose is that the ALP “has committed to governing for all South Australians”. Really? What was Option B?

Next, the agreement aims to secure stable and effective Government. Fair enough.

And the third and final purpose of the deal?

“In developing this Agreement, the parties have attempted to, as far as possible, respond to the result of the South Australian State election held on 15 March 2014,” it reads in full.

Not wishing to bang on about this, but the election result was a 53 per cent vote for the Liberals. It is hard to see how a deal to deliver a fourth term in office to a party that got 47 per cent of the vote is responding to the election result.

It suspends reality when read hand-in-hand with the state’s constitution, that states that the party that wins more than 50 per cent of the vote must as far as practicable form government.

On Monday, Geoff Brock admitted to a bad case of the nerves before the first sitting of the new parliament, comparing it to the first day of football when “you’re a little bit apprehensive, you’re a little bit nervous”.

“You want to succeed, you want to do the right thing and that’s all it is today and once I get into the Parliament I’m very confident what we’ll do is we will have a great Parliament going up, the first session of Parliament and we will all work very closely together,” he enthused, speaking with that Gattling-gun delivery common to so many country MPs.

So, he wants the Liberals to be a bunch of happy campers too, despite denying them government?

“Guys, you know very, very well that the … electoral system in South Australia is the number of seats you win … the past has gone, we’ve made a decision …

And what of the constitution, that says the “electoral system” must give government to the party with more than 50 per cent of the vote?

“That might be,” he said. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen that, but look …”

Mash that burley and sharpen those hooks, it’s a done deal.

Matthew Abraham and David Bevan present the weekday breakfast program on 891 ABC Adelaide.

InDaily’s regular political columnist Tom Richardson is on leave.