Nick Xenophon’s threat to major parties in the upcoming South Australian election is undisputable and just over two months out from the poll his SA Best party has claimed their first ministerial scalp.
Former South Australian Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith is quitting his position as Labor government Minister for Investment and Trade (among other portfolios) and has offered to campaign on behalf of Graham Davies, the SA Best candidate in his former seat of Waite. Before you suggest we sack our subeditor, yes, that is all factually correct: Hamilton-Smith has changed parties more times than an indecisive New Year’s Eve reveler, and the number of challenges he’s made to the various leaders he’s served make our federal parties look positively loyal.
Crikey takes a look back at career highlights from one of Australian politics’ greatest turncoat.
1997 to 2007: Liberal backbench to cabinet
A former army officer* and business man, Hamilton-Smith was elected to the seat of Waite in 1997, holding off a challenge from the Democrats in a fairly dire campaign for John Olsen’s Liberal Party. Hamilton-Smith was made cabinet secretary in October 2001, and served as Innovation and Tourism minister from December until the next year’s election, when Mike Rann’s Labor came to power, an election in which Hamilton-Smith strengthened his grip on his seat. In October 2005 Hamilton-Smith made his first attempt at the Liberal leadership, challenging then leader Rob Kerin, which was then withdrawn. In April 2007, he rose again, this time against Iain Evans, and was successful.
2007 to 2009: Liberal leader
His elevation to the Liberal leadership was initially followed by a bump in the Liberal party’s Newspoll fortunes, but twin disasters befell him in 2009. First there was the shock loss of the Frome by-election to independent Geoff Brock. He then had the humiliation of backing down on allegations he had made that the Labor party had been receiving donations from agencies linked to the Church of Scientology, based on what was later shown to be forged documents. Polling numbers began to dip, and talk of a spill flourished. Hamilton-Smith eventually resigned, days after winning a leadership ballot by a single vote; replaced by Isobel Redmond.
2010: Liberal deputy leader
After a stint on the backbench (and following a much stronger Liberal party showing at the 2010 state election) Hamilton-Smith won a party room ballot to become Redmond’s deputy leader. Redmond had wanted Evans instead, and Hamilton-Smith eventually stood aside. You know, for a bit.
2012: more leadership challenges
In October 2012, Hamilton-Smith launched a challenge again Redmond (with Steven Marshall in tow as deputy). Redmond hung on, just, but Hamilton-Smith wouldn’t rule out a future challenge, eventually supporting Marshall when he ran unopposed after Redmond’s resignation in January 2013, picking up a few shadow ministries for his trouble.
2014: Independent Liberal Labor government minister
A time also known as peak Hamilton-Smith. The 2014 South Australian election resulted in a hung parliament. After the cross bench backed Labor, Hamilton-Smith announced he would resign from the Liberal party to become an “independent liberal” in the Labor government — while also picking up the portfolios for trade, defence industries and veterans affairs. He was called a traitor by then federal Liberal education minister Christopher Pyne, while his old ally Marshall said “Hamilton-Smith’s disgraceful decision is unrivaled in its treachery and duplicity”.
The interactions between Hamilton-Smith and his former employers — not to mention Marshall, his erstwhile “political soul-mate” — did not calm down noticeably over the remainder of Hamilton-Smith’s political career. “I have a lot to say about the member for Dunstan and I have a lot to say about the leadership group opposite,” he said in December 2015. “I know the full history and I know about people’s performance, or lack thereof, so if you want to keep it up I will not only defend the point, I will be quite colourful and detailed in my explanations.”
2018: one last jump
His three relatively successful years in a Labor cabinet clearly did not change Hamilton-Smith’s fickle tendencies. Having handed out how-to-vote cards for Nick Xenophon Team MP Rebekha Sharkie’s 2016 federal election campaign, he declared that Waite would be “best served by a Xenophon candidate stepping up”. While Premier Jay Weatherall said Hamilton-Smith had made an “outstanding contribution” during his time in Cabinet, Xenophon himself seems less interested in his help, saying: “It’s the kind of help we don’t need … I don’t think it is useful. I’m sure he thinks he’s being helpful, but I wish he wouldn’t be.”
*Hamilton-Smith was hilariously on-brand from the very start. A year after joining the Australian Army, he apparently attempted to ditch them for the British.
The answer to the headline question is ‘NO’. That honour still belongs to Billy Hughes. Famously, when asked why he had never joined the Country Party, Hughes replied, “A man has to draw the line somewhere.”
I know little of the man’s principles, if any, but to denigrate someone for changing their mind is to raise JK Galbraith’s axiom.
Even Kerr’s Cur came to regret his actions and became enlightened so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
It is this sort of nyah-nyah reportage that makes politics such a despicable, ethics free zone.
If someone has a Damascene conversion, it should be welcomed if moral.
Otherwise Xenophon probably pings it “… I wish he wouldn’t help”.
Mr Hamilton-Headline is considered somewhat of a joke among my circle of friends. His defection to Labor was considered a low act even by the standards of Australian politics.
Still, to paraphrase Paul Keating, at least you know that the self serving are trying.
Good to see Xenophon telling him to, er, nick off.
He has never changed parties. He left the Liberal Party to become an independent and served in the Weatherill Cabinet in that capacity, similar to Rory McEwen (independent) and Karlene Maywald (Austn National Party) serving from 2002-2010 in the Rann Cabinet. So, you’re headline assertion is wrong; he hasn’t ever changed parties. He just left one, and that’s very common in Australian politics. There’s a long list of MPs who have left their parties to become independents. Changing parties is a whole new set; Cheryl Kernot was maybe the most noteable of recent times, along with Pauline Hanson, Graeme Campbell and Bob Katter. Not to mention Bill McWilliams who left the Revenue Tariffists, Liberal Party and Nationalist Party before becoming the first leader of the Country Party and then leaving them to rejoin the Nationalists. All up, this article is poorly researched, presumptive crap.
Actually I’d rate Joe Lyons and Billy Hughes higher on the “rat scale”. Both destroyed their own party which just happened to be in government, and took with them a large chunk of the Labor caucus into a merger with the conservative opposition. They then took on the leadership of the merged party and ended up as the prime minister. Rather larger acts of bastardry than Hamilton-Smith who was, as Gough might have put it, “a fucking pissant state politician”. Hughes did the counter-rat 12 years later and brought down the conservative Nationalist Party government of Stanley Bruce, from which he was expelled. Then he joined Lyons’ United Australia Party, and was even its leader briefly at age 78 after Lyons’death and Menzies’dumping. Having failed to call a party meeting for 18 months, he was expelled again and eventually wound up in the Liberal Party where he remained until his long-overdue demise in 1951. Makes Hamilton-Smith look like a piker.
I agree Justin. If this is the standard Crikey accept then it is indeed, Crap!