“I want to see a total ban on gambling advertising. Parents don’t want their kids to know more about the odds than the game.”

“My job is to keep them all on their toes,” says Nick Xenophon as he speeds along to his next pre-election meeting, having returned my call on his way to the Holden factory in Adelaide.
“It’s about keeping all sides honest,” he says, while offering his driver directions to the company’s construction plant in the city’s north. But then, navigation is not a skill Xenophon is short of.
Manoeuvring an independent path through Australia’s political landscape is a craft the former lawyer has honed since becoming Independent Senator for South Australia in 2007 and before that 10 years in state politics.
Known for his passionate stance against injustices, shortsighted policies and vested interests across a slew of policy areas, Xenophon is a fervent supporter of direct intervention to sustain Australia’s automotive industry.
Critical of the Liberal’s plan to take away $500 million in subsidies from the industry, as well as the ALP’s changes to the Fringe Benefits Tax, it’s a case of ‘a plague on both your houses’.
It’s a common approach for this Independent Senator whose political philosophy lies outside the traditional boundaries. “It’s about right or wrong, not left or right,” he says.
Xenophon points to his steadfastness on a range of policy issues – from protecting Australian manufacturing to addressing Australia’s problem gambling epidemic – as the underlying reason why he deserves re-election.
His securing of nearly $1 billion in funding for farmers and river communities on the Murray, pushing for food labelling reforms to protect Australian producers, and laws to restrict the foreign take-over of prime agricultural land are some of the interventions he should be judged on, he says. And then there’s the pokies.
Julia Gillard’s 2012 backflip on poker machine reform he described as a disgrace, stopping meaningful change in the way the gaming industry operated in its tracks, but the Coalition have been equally culpable he says.
Tony Abbott’s newly-stated position – to allow the industry to self-regulate – Xenophon calls “brazen and disappointing”.
“There’s a much greater awareness of problem gambling now,” he says. “When I ran in 1997 [for the South Australian Legislative Council) it was dismissed by many as not a serious issue.
“Today we now know that something like 40 per cent of poker machine losses come from problem gamblers.”
Beyond that well-documented battlefront, Xenophon sees the rise in online gambling and sports betting ads on TV as the trigger for a new tsunami of gambling addiction.
With some headway in terms of restrictions to live-odds betting ads, he wants to go further.
“I want to see a total ban on gambling advertising,” he says. “Parents don’t want their kids to know more about the odds than the game.”
Fond of election stunts, when he first ran for the senate in 2007 he called a press conference at the Adelaide Zoo in front of the giraffe enclosure, declaring he would “stick his neck out for South Australia”. In 2010 he walked a mule down Adelaide’s Rundle Mall to show his capacity for stubbornness.
This election he’s dropped the wildlife for a more restrained metaphor, using the frame of a new house – with only 40 per cent of its cladding in place – to represent his campaign to make housing affordability a central issue for the next parliament.
While prophesy’s a dangerous game, given that all the polls are forecasting a Coalition win on September 7 – with their control of the Senate denied, Xenophon’s influence in the Upper House – if re-elected – may well be greater than his first term.
He’s made it clear he will not support the Coalition’s $3.2 billion direct action plan as it stands, and would seek amendments to transform it into a carbon pricing scheme.
He’s also underwhelmed by Tony Abbott’s $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme, which he calls “way too generous”.
If Xenophon and other Independents hold the balance of power in the Senate, Tony Abbott will need them.
In such a scenario, expect the watchdog to be on the scent of deals himself – to realise his long and passionately fought-for reforms.