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Bespoke power goes a long way

Tony Wright

March 6, 2010

IF ANYONE retained the quaint sentiment that the Australian political milieu was still related to old social class and wealth structures, a casual stroll through Adelaide's halls of power might disabuse them.
It's hardly a blinding insight, of course, to note that Australia's political class has moved far from the days when Labor was the party of trodden-down workers and the Liberals represented rich bosses. Not at a time when the Labor Prime Minister's family wealth is measured in the tens of millions, nor when we recall that the Liberals' new leader, Tony Abbott, complained after the previous election that he was having trouble paying the mortgage after losing his cabinet minister's pay packet.
But Adelaide tends to scramble the brain.
South Australia rather enjoys its status as the only state that does not trace its origins to convict transportation, and there remains something of a sneaking regard in conservative circles for its old Establishment families, even if more than a few of them have fallen on hard times.
But as South Australia heads towards its latest election, who might have imagined that Liberal Party leader Isobel Redmond - who hopes to become the state's first female premier - gave a fellow named Frank Sartor his start in Labor Party politics in the nation's first former convict colony, Sydney?
Redmond swears it's true, and thinks it's a hoot. Here is a Liberal leader whose career began far from the Adelaide Establishment. She was born on the outskirts of Sydney, attended state schools and worked to pay her own way through university because her family couldn't afford it.
Seeking independence, she managed to buy a small terrace house in Sydney's inner west, in the now-groovy suburb of Newtown. But when she married and decided Adelaide held her future she sold her terrace. The buyer was Frank Sartor. When he discovered there was a plan by developers to tear down the terraces on either side of his new home, he formed a resident's action committee, launching himself into politics. Sartor went on to become Labor mayor of Sydney for 12 years before entering the NSW Parliament, where he became best known as a planning minister who became something of a darling among … errr … developers.
So the strange world of politics in Australia turns.
Adelaide, however, turns presumption about connections and political class divisions on its head more completely than that.
Indeed, about all you need to know about Adelaide is to be found in one of the city's more idiosyncratic businesses.
It's a lobbying outfit called Bespoke Approach. To say its directors are well connected is to understate the case. It's the breadth and diversity of those connections that catches the imagination.
Bespoke was established by Ian Smith, one of the more plugged-in political and business consultants in the nation, the chief executive officer of the high-powered public relations firm Gavin Anderson and Company (Australia) and former chief adviser to Jeff Kennett when Kennett was Victorian premier.
This conservative insider also happens to be married to former Australian Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja.
Smith is an engaging character with a well-developed sense of humour, which, you might imagine, he'd require to come up with an idea such as Bespoke. The two partners he persuaded to join him come from the two extremes of Adelaide society and politics.
Nick Bolkus is the son of Greek immigrants who ran a small Adelaide green grocery. He went on to become a lawyer, a left-wing Labor senator and a cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. He was stabbed by his own faction in 2004 and, after a period of recovery, has become a big-time mover and shaker in his home town, regularly accused of bringing business contacts a little too close to the state Labor government of Mike Rann. Left wing isn't what it once was - Bolkus, it has been reported, paid a tidy $3.3 million for his house at Adelaide's Henley Beach in 2008.
The third member of the team is none other than Alexander Downer, son of the Adelaide Establishment at its highest levels, and former Liberal foreign minister.

Downer was brought up in one of Adelaide's great mansions. The brilliant Labor raconteur and surely the last federal Labor minister to have been a shearer, the late Mick Young, once told a possibly apocryphal story about turning up to the Downer estate to pick up a cheque for a shearing job and being overwhelmed at the size of place. ''That's not the residence,'' the gatekeeper told him, ''it's simply the gate house where young Alexander keeps his dolls.'' These days, Downer resides in something a bit more modest in the Adelaide Hills.
But Bolkus and Downer do rather more than lobby business and political pals.
Bolkus is the chairman of the South Australian Labor Party's fund-raising organisation. Downer is chairman of the Liberal Party's fund-raising committee. How fascinating the discussions must be across the Bespoke boardroom table.
Bolkus has no trouble luring his contacts to dinners where the tab ranges from $500 to $1500 a head. Handy change for a political party, particularly when an election rolls around. And even more particularly when that election suddenly becomes a tight race, which South Australia's state poll on March 20 has unexpectedly become.
The Liberals, who haven't had a sniff of the state Treasury benches for eight years, could hardly fund an advertising campaign at the previous election. But suddenly the money is flowing again. Simon Birmingham, a South Australian Liberal senator, had trouble getting 100 supporters to a fund-raiser he hosted last year when Malcolm Turnbull was leader in Canberra and Martin Hamilton-Smith was the Liberal state leader.
Last month 200 of the faithful shelled out $500 a plate. Downer, it seems, has successfully tapped his contacts around town, and they've responded. The reason? A new leader who accidentally helped give a Labor powerbroker his start years ago looks to have a chance at taking the premiership.
It's not about social class any more. It's simpler and older than mere class. It's called power