[Peetwo]

Sic'em REX!

Ref:

"Sic 'em Rex!" -

Maybe not entirely PC but having placed a cyber watch on the encouraging progress of Senator Rex (so far), I thought the following 1989 'Antz Pantz' advertisement quite appropriate..

Via YouTube:

And the legend grows -

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 "Sic 'em Rex!" -  

Slight diversion here but IMO it is important...

Via the AFR:

This is what motivates the 'coalition of the reasonable'

Andrew Tillett Political Correspondent

Jul 5, 2019 — 11.00pm

Call it South Australia's and Tasmania's revenge. Long derided as economic laggards and political backwaters, the first week of the new Parliament demonstrated these two states are now enjoying a super-sized role in Canberra's corridors of power and it's one the rest of the country had better get used to.

The government scored a huge victory on Thursday when it secured passage of its $158 billion tax cut package, but it was a triumph that rested in no small part on the amenability of the Senate crossbench – minus One Nation.




Centre Alliance senators Rex Patrick and Stirling Griff with Senator Jacqui Lambie.  Alex Ellinghausen

And while three cross bench senators – South Australians Rex Patrick and Stirling Griff and Tasmania's Jacqui Lambie – have cemented their importance to this federal government, they are driven by a parochial desire to extract the best deal for their states.

"We have to approach every decision through a South Australian lens," Patrick tells AFR Weekend.

"We're mindful that there are only 10 members in the lower house, including Rebekha [Sharkie, their Centre Alliance colleague] that represent South Australia.

"Jackie's in the same position with only five [Tasmanian] members among the 150.

"So we are very alive to the fact we have to balance out that lack of representation in the lower house. We have to try to use this opportunity, this influence we have, to even the keel a little bit."

Asked whether, from their perches in the Senate, the trio should effectively impose minority rule, Patrick is unapologetic.


"That's the way the Constitution works. We are elected constitutionally by the people of South Australia and I have no problem looking at things through that South Australian lens."

As they started talking turkey with the government over tax cuts, Patrick and Griff quickly zeroed in on the need to lower the cost of gas, which fuels 51 per cent of South Australia's electricity needs.

They did not get a publicly signed, sealed and delivered agreement to reduce gas to a certain price (Patrick has floated a figure of $7 a gigajoule which competitor regulators have told him is possible). What they did get was a timetable for steps the government will take, such as tightening the Domestic Gas Security Mechanism.


"We turbocharged that," Patrick says.

South Australians Griff and Patrick belong to what remains of Nick Xenophon's political machine.  Griff was elected on Xenophon's coat tails at the 2016 double dissolution election while Patrick replaced the party founder when he tried to transfer to state politics.

Patrick emerged as the public face of the tax cut negotiations, in part because of his role as Centre Alliance's energy spokesman, but also because he is comfortable in the media spotlight.

A self-described workaholic, Patrick was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia with his parents and siblings seven years later, spending his formative years in the steel town of Whyalla.

Submarine service

Patrick had the typical bush childhood of his generation, where kids were allowed to roam far and wide and had to make their own fun. One game he played with his older brother and friends was fox hunt, where they would drive around trying to find each other using the signal strength of their CB radios.

It was a precursor to Patrick's time in the navy, which he joined as a 16-year-old. Patrick tells AFR Weekend he wanted to be a radar plotter but was guided towards becoming an electrical technician because he was good at maths and physics.

Patrick volunteered for submarine service early on and says his time under the sea was a useful training ground for life in the Canberra bubble.

"I often say that in order to be a submariner you do a psych test and if you fail, you're in," he says.

"Living on a submarine with 60 other people, as I did on an Oberon for a long period of time, teaches you how to get along with people.

"In those days you'd have one shower a week whether you needed it or not. It was a tough life. It was a 24/7 life. It taught you about working hard and working as a team as well."

After a 10-year stint, Patrick left the navy in the mid-1990s and joined an engineering firm building sonar systems before forming his own sonar training business in 2007.

It was here that Patrick's commitment to accountability and transparency in government crystallised.

New fleet

He wrote a series of articles for a defence trade publication on early preparations to acquire a new fleet of submarines where he advocated for the low-risk approach of adapting an existing off-the-shelf design. It didn't go down well with the military, who  tried to use his status as a defence contractor to gag him.

He says now that experience reinforced his belief in both the value of having different ideas and "not just accepting what governments said".

Patrick's entree to politics was originally as a volunteer to then shadow defence minister David Johnston, advising him on submarines. But when the Liberals won the 2013 election, Patrick knocked back a job offer because he was already wary of the Tony-Abbott-Peta Credlin centralised control approach to running a government.

Acquaintances suggested he get to know Xenophon and the two got on well instantly. Patrick saw in Xenophon someone who threw himself into trying to solve problems, rather than being shackled by the confines of a major party.

In 2015, he became Xenophon's senior adviser before entering the Senate in 2017.


"At no time throughout my career have I ever tried to climb a ladder, " Patrick says. David Rowe

"At no time throughout my career have I ever tried to climb a ladder, " Patrick says.


"All I've ever said is 'I want to do the job I'm doing right now and do that well'. Then people come and ask you to do something more. I wasn't pushing to be a senator.  Nick just recognised that I was probably the right person to take over and made the offer."


During his time in the Senate, Patrick has at times displayed an obsessive tendency to chase down every hole on issues that are important to him.


His commitment to winning, and keeping, defence jobs for Adelaide is ferocious, even when strategic interest suggests they could be better located elsewhere.


Dudded again

A good example of this is the investigations now under way at the Department of Defence to move deep maintenance of the Collins class submarines from Adelaide to Perth.

Such a move makes sense for a number of reasons. The subs' home port is Perth, and demands on labour and workshop space as construction of the new submarine ramps up will put the squeeze on Adelaide's ability to service the Collins submarines over the medium and long term.


But every little nugget that Patrick uncovers through Freedom of Information requests or Senate estimates invariably ends up in The Adelaide Advertiser as a warning of how SA is being dudded again.


Now unquestionably a Senate's kingmaker, Patrick insists his new-found clout "doesn't change me in any way, shape or form".


"I will still approach everything the way I always have, which is 'There is an issue before us. Let's get some perspectives, let's get some understanding. What is the right thing to do?'"


Patrick insists there is no ideological underpinning to how he tackles an issue.


"I am an engineer. So I don't think about things politically," he says.


Patrick points out that his and Centre Alliance's vote is irrelevant when Labor agrees with the Coalition.


"Sometimes the position is black or white, yes or no. Other times it's gray, and that's when the work starts," he says.


Like the gas price undertaking Patrick and Griff won as part of the tax negotiations, Lambie's agreement with the government is opaque. She raised the possibility of the Commonwealth forgiving Tasmania's $157 million debt for social housing as a way to ease the state's homelessness crisis.


The government has told her it will work through the issue with Tasmania's Hodgman government over coming weeks. If Canberra stops short of cancelling the debt altogether, it could waive the interest payments, which Lambie says cost the Tasmanian budget $15 million annually.


"I just wanted to come in here and show Tasmanians: 'You voted me in, you wanted me to get the job done, you wanted me to do something about this public housing'," Lambie explains.


Lambie says she is a changed person from the firebrand that characterised her first stint in the Senate between 2014 and 2017. She wants to start her second-chance political career with a clean slate.


Collegial relationships

She now appreciates, she says, the importance of having collegial relationships with government ministers if she wants to chalk up a record of delivering for those who voted for her.


Jacqui Lambie has a long list of things she wants for Tasmania. Alex Ellinghausen

"I've had relationships with these guys in the past. I've fallen out with all of them," she says.

"That 3½ years I was in, I've learnt from that because I did make mistakes. I isolated ministers and things like that. Some of the ways I did things, I look back and think 'I should have done it this way', but with that comes knowledge."

Part of her new-found savviness is working with the Centre Alliance pairing. While not a formal negotiating bloc of three, they are co-operating in areas where there is common ground.


The impact of Senate voting reforms that were introduced in 2016 to reduce the likelihood of micro party candidates getting elected were diluted that year because it was a double dissolution election with all Senate seats up for grabs. But in 2019, with the Senate formula back to the regular 50 per cent of seats, they worked as intended. The number of senators who are not members of any of the major parties or the Greens went from 11 elected in 2016 to five.

That changing dynamic was on show during the tax cut negotiations. With Labor at sixes and sevens, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson tried her luck with a multibillion-dollar ambit claim, asking for taxpayers to fund construction of a coal-fired power station and the 1930s-era Bradfield irrigation scheme.

"That's just silly stuff," Lambie says of Hanson's demands.


Lambie says she has a "big list" of things she wants for Tasmania but she is playing a long game.


"I've got six years up here. Unless there is a change of power in the Senate for some reason and someone goes down, slow and steady will win the race.


"If you over-ask, they will say "see you later, I'm going to deal with another crossbencher".


Next time the government comes looking for her vote, Lambie plans to focus on improving health services, particularly in her native north-west where small rural communities can face long waits or travel times to access treatment.

"It's worked well [the tax cut talks]. It would be nice to think it's going to be this kosher all the way along," she says.

MTF...P2