Talking Heads: Oct 11

This week on Talking Heads Peter Thompson’s guest is Nick Xenophon, the Independent Senator from Adelaide.

Xenophon is a man with a powerful urge to help people – victims, the disadvantaged and those without a voice.

He is a politician who’s actually too embarrassed to take up his entitlement to fly business class. He routinely swaps his seat with another passenger and sits at the back of the plane.

In the 1990’s, working as a personal injury lawyer, Xenophon became increasingly angry about the spread of poker machines in his home town. A client of his, who had brain-damage, had lost thousands of dollars at the hands of seemingly unscrupulous hoteliers who actively encouraged the man’s addiction.

So Xenophon set up the “No Pokies Campaign” and ran for State Parliament hoping to focus attention on the issue. What he didn’t expect was what happened …he got elected.

“I honestly didn’t think I would get in at the State election in October 1997 but I scraped in with the help of preferences from all sides of politics…they didn’t think I was going to get in so they thought it was quite safe to pass their preferences with me.”

Three years ago he was lured to the national stage and to have a tilt at the Senate by Kevin Rudd’s stated determination to take action on poker machines.

“If I think something’s wrong then I want to do something about it and to me poker machines are a litmus test of good government … I figured in a democracy if you believe in something strongly enough you should make a stand.”

Suddenly this maverick crusader found himself in the Upper House holding the balance of power.

Now, with independents and pokies firmly back in the spotlight, TALKING HEADS shines a little of that light on one of Australia’s most unusual pollies.

“I’d like to think that I made a difference and I like to think that I’m still, I’m still the same bloke that I was before I got involved in politics in the first place.”

It airs 6:30pm Monday, October 11 on ABC1.