SA Premier Mike Rann walked out on a brutal press conference yesterday as the Michelle Chantelois issue again prevented Labor getting its message out. The latest snafu involves Labor’s tactic of dragging the Premier’s wife into the campaign — and even that didn’t work.

Meanwhile, it’s raining in Queensland and that might make a difference to a state election 3000 kilometres away. South Australians are asking whether Queensland and NSW flood waters will arrive in time to reverse the environmental and economic catastrophe in the Lower Lakes and irrigated Riverland. University of Adelaide Professor Michael Geddes says even though the rain is in the River Murray catchment, SA will get nothing because of the incredible distance.

His colleague, Professor Mike Young, says it’s a “get out of jail card” for the Lower Lakes — and, he says, other Labor states may give SA extra flow just in time for Labor in Adelaide to announce good news on water before the election.

Water is one of the big issues and at Premier Mike Rann’s State Administration Centre and at the Liberal Party’s Parliament House suite, every little nuance, even a raindrop, is calculated in electoral terms.

This is especially true because yesterday’s Newspoll puts the parties neck and neck. Two-party preferred, they’re each on 50%.

So this “get out of jail” metaphor that Professor Young used in relation to the Lower Lakes can also apply to Rann.

He’s announced that if Labor is re-elected, court-room juries will be told more often about an accused person’s record before deciding innocence or guilt. But if it applies to criminals, it can apply to politicians. This election is largely about trust, and Rann’s trust rating dropped in every recent poll.

The Opposition lists 11 core promises broken by Labor, including its pledge to stop using taxpayers’ money for political advertising under the guise of government information.

“You do not have the moral fibre to go back on your promise. I have,” Treasurer Kevin Foley famously told Parliament.

The government’s trust factor took another blow after Rann exaggerated the so-called mining boom in SA. ABS data shows the state has fewer jobs in mining than any other mainland state.

At Labor’s campaign launch Rann claimed SA “leads Australia in the development and production of renewable energy”. Not so, said Liberal frontbencher Iain Evans after checking figures from Clean Energy Australia.

“The government’s claim is wrong. SA ranks fifth,” Evans showed.

“We lead in every category but hydro,” energy minister Pat Conlon responded lamely.

But the trust issue is at its sharpest over whether Rann or Chantelois is telling the truth about the nature of a relationship the Premier had with the married mother of two. The Premier denies his friendship with Chantelois was s-xual. It was, he says, merely “flirty” and “funny”.

In October last year, Phillips was at the National Wine Centre. “Some of the people were peering in the door of the function room downstairs. As I looked in I could see him (Rann) there,”  Phillips said in an interview with Adelaide’s Independent Weekly. He walked up to Rann and hit him with the magazine. “My name’s Rick and I was married to Michelle,” he said as he struck.

Phillips was taken to the watch-house and charged. Early next morning it seemed that every television news crew in Adelaide was encamped in his cul de sac at 7am. Three hours later, news reporters asked Rann if he knew the man who attacked him.

“I’ve never met him before,” replied the Premier.

Reporters persisted.

“You say you’ve never met him before. Do you know what he meant by what he said to you?”

“No I don’t … ah intend … I do not intend discussing something that is now with the police, thank you,” he replied, and that was the end of the interview.

It was only after the magazine incident that Chantelois publicly revealed her claims of a s-xual affair.

On Thursday Phillips received a $1000, two-year good behaviour bond and no conviction was recorded.

With a front-page photo of Rick Phillips and under the headline “My wife and Rann”, The Independent Weekly ran an interview with the husband who had maintained five months of strict silence until after the case was heard.

Highly-placed strategists told Crikey that Labor “was gutted” by the Phillips story on Friday, not so much because of allegations regarding the relationship but because it went to the issue of trust.

With The Independent Weekly story taking off, Labor responded with an enormously high-risk strategy. The Advertiser newspaper was offered an exclusive interview with Rann’s wife, Sasha Carruozzo. “Wife stands by her Rann”, ran the Advertiser’s headline on Saturday, almost mirroring The Independent’s headline with a completely different message.

“Leaping to the defence of her partner two weeks before his political fate is decided at the state election, Ms Carruozzo yesterday rejected allegations he had a s-xual relationship with the former Parliament House barmaid,” wrote Greg Kelton.

“Ms Carruozzo also denied speculation and rumours sweeping Adelaide that she had left Mr Rann over the allegations, that she had fled to Italy and that she would be leaving him when the election campaign was over. Dressed casually in a baby-blue blouse and navy-blue slacks, Ms Carruozzo used her lunch hour from her job at Anglicare to try to sweep aside the doubts that still swirl around the Chantelois issue.”

The interview was conducted not at her home, not even in a neutral location, but in Rann’s ministerial suite on the 15th floor of the government’s State Administration Centre.

Rann’s chief media adviser, Jill Bottrall, was present throughout the interview.

The Advertiser’s website and other media were swamped by outraged readers’ protests over a public official, the Premier’s media secretary, now spinning for the Premier’s wife. Instead of sympathy there was indignation, anger. Labor had bungled again.

Neck n neck, the parties are. Voters are in the jury box on March 20. Which party will they think has been rehabilitated?

Hendrik Gout is editor of Adelaide The Independent Weekly.