Nick Xenophon was visibly nervous as he took to the stage on a floating platform on the Torrens river on Monday night for the leaders’ debate, with just under a fortnight to go until polling day in the South Australian election.



Labor’s Jay Weatherill wore a red tie, the Liberal Steven Marshall a pale blue one and Xenophon had no tie at all. Xenophon arrived on his own, and rocked on his heels and breathed deeply as the sun sank lower in the sky, and the stiff breeze came up and the minutes ticked down to the live broadcast.

Pre-poll voting had opened earlier in the day, to high demand, and the evening debate crowd was thinner than expected. It was supposed to be 140 hand-picked South Australians of all voting persuasions, asking the questions. About 100 showed up, forcing the ABC wranglers to stack up the spare chairs lickety-split and shepherd the participants closer together and closer to the front because, as one of the producers told the crowd, empty chairs made for bad television.

Weatherill spoke softly in the cavernous space, but with that steel we hear every few months at Council of Australian Governments meetings. Marshall spoke like a less-mannered Christopher Pyne about improving the local investment climate and boosting exports, and Xenophon looked like a man willing himself not to screw up.

In Canberra we are entirely used to Xenophon being stressed out and strung out, that’s his modus vivendi, revving himself into a frenzy.

But this was a different politician than the familiar kingmaker of the Senate; this was a politician forced to stump on his merits, to present as a change-maker rather than as a last-ditch shaper of second chamber legislative outcomes.

Xenophonia: The Homecoming, wasn’t a sellout at the fringe, this was now a main stage act with all the unreasonable expectations and all the punitive judgments.

When he quit Canberra for his hometown of Adelaide last year at the height of the dual citizenship frenzy, he was being spoken of as a potential premier. With just under a fortnight to go, the local lore is Xenophon’s campaign has hit some headwinds. A Newspoll at the end of last year had Xenophon’s SA-Best party surging on a primary vote of 32%. Last weekend the primary vote figure was 21%.

The major parties are throwing everything at him. The preference deals are unfavourable. On free-to-air television, SA Unions advertisements say the SA-Best leader isn’t the best for South Australian workers.

The contest has a strange air of unreality, because in a three-way race in a two-party-preferred political system, no-one can predict the result.

During Monday night’s debate, an entirely civilised affair, even at its most fractious moments, Xenophon dutifully recited his offering, which sounded thin when proffered as a putative premier.

Weatherill tried to neutralise the obvious “it’s time” factor by styling himself as a fighter and a futurist (look – I bring people like Elon Musk to this state). The premier advised his audience to ignore the naysayers and stay the course. “Don’t turn back now, we’re just beginning to make some extraordinary gains.”

Marshall reasoned Labor had been at the helm for 16 years and it was time to “hit the rest button” because all the fighter had left to offer South Australians was the fight, and the fight was a shtick that had grown tiresome.

Xenophon, who had fretted much of the evening about the exodus of young people out of South Australia (an anxiety that hangs over the contest, and one that all the political protagonists share in common), and about the Australian Hotels Association spending “at least $1m attacking me with all sorts of misleading campaigns”, got to his feet for his closing pitch.

Handed the opportunity of reducing his ambition to the core, Xenophon doubled down for his most aspirational sell of the night. The pitch was South Australians, if they chose to do so, could make a bit of political history on 17 March.

“This election is a chance to replace the bastards of whichever persuasion,” Xenophon told the crowd. “That’s a chance that South Australians actually have.

“Can I just say this to you? For the first time ever in the state’s political history, there is a third alternative from the political centre,” he said.

“We have a government that deserves to lose, and an opposition that, quite frankly, doesn’t deserve to win. What SA-Best is offering is an alternative from the centre, focused on delivering outcomes for our state.

“For the first time, you have a real choice. Decent people, ordinary people, trying to do something extraordinary. The 36 candidates around the state – we want to give South Australians that choice from the political centre to revive our state.”

