South Australian Premier Mike Rann was unequivocal. It was a deal, he said, with New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh for 400 gigalitres of water down the Murray.

“A deal,” said the opening paragraph of the front-page story with an accompanying front page photo in the Adelaide Advertiser yesterday, under the huge headline “Fill Her Up”. “A volume of water that would almost fill Sydney Harbour will flow down the Murray to South Australia as a result of a deal finalised between South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales late yesterday,” reckoned the story.

Quote after quote from Mike Rann, fulsome in his own praise, and Jay Weatherill, the Environment Minister. “Things are finally looking up for the river,” quoth Weatherill.

All you can drink, happy hour.

Water is, after trust, one of the central issues in the South Australian election. Other States have rivers other than the Murray-Darling, but only South Australia has only the Murray. The river is its life. Adelaide drinks and washes in it, Riverland irrigators survive on it, and the Lower Lakes and the Coorong are dying because of the lack of it.

So a Premier who can claim to having made a deal with other states for a share of the floodwaters now making their way down the Darling is good news electorally for Labor.

But other media in Adelaide were mystified by yesterday’s front page of The Advertiser. How had other reporters missed this golden news, this shower of success for Premier Mike Rann?

Because the story is a crock. There was no written agreement, there is no written agreement. The Premier’s departmental chief executive Chris Eccles says, in an email released by the Liberals, that it’s inaccurate to say there’s a deal. There were, in fact, ongoing negotiations. The Premier of Queensland simply admitted to “a number of discussions”; the New South Wales Premier the same. By yesterday, even Mr Rann was reduced to calling it an agreement that water entitlements will be met.

They’re entitlements. SA is going to get what it’s entitled to. Whoopie.

In any case it’s not a handout South Australia needs — it’s a nationally-managed Murray-Darling. South Australia shouldn’t be begging other states for water.

Rann’s deal entered the lexicon because one political office in one political election campaign gave one political reporter a file of flimsy flim-flam. No wonder the Opposition’s miffed.

Now here’s how the ’Tiser reported that anger on page four this morning: “The Government was embroiled in a political fight with the Opposition yesterday over Premier Rann’s announcement, revealed in The Advertiser.” Revealed? Not so much as regurgitated — a Labor line swallowed by a newspaper a half-week out from polling day. Even a poker deal requires you to lay your cards on the table.

Meanwhile, things aren’t going completely smoothly in the Liberal camp because of hiccups in its own campaign. Twice this week prominent Liberal front-bencher and previous leadership contender Vickie Chapman refused to say straight-out she wouldn’t challenge Isobel Redmond after the election. Luckily for the Opposition, she issued a statement pledging her leader every loyalty before the cock crowed three times.

And what of the Labor leadership after the election? Mike Rann yesterday promised to stay on as the member for Ramsay post-March 20, whatever the result, but then said that the position of party leader was “up to Caucus”.

Even if it holds government Labor will lose seats this election. How long, asked ABC radio morning presenters David Bevan and Matthew Abraham on-air this week, before Mike Rann loses the support of the faction leaders and feels that dreaded tap on the shoulder? Or will he be tempted by a diplomatic posting or a board position with a defence company? He’s got good contacts there.

Rann has had to deny over the past few days that he’s seeking to replace Howard-appointed former SA Liberal Senator Amanda Vanstone as Australian ambassador to Italy. He said that his wife has a cottage in Italy but that it’s boarded up and South Australia is their home.

Perhaps Mr Rann could get a job as a volunteer with the Wilderness Society campaign against mining in the Arkaroola Wilderness. Twice Rann was elected with a policy to stop new uranium mines. Three times SA got brand new or bigger uranium mines.

There are environmental issues of real substance in this campaign, including a proposed uranium mine in the Arkaroola Wilderness north of Adelaide in the majestic Flinders Ranges. In a submission to government this week, state museum scientists said their cross-discipline analysis was in no doubt: uranium mining there will cause species extinction.

The Rann Government says it can be trusted to make the right decision on the Arkaroola Wilderness uranium mine after the election on March 20. It might allow it, it might not, is its present policy.

Rann’s former boss, Labor icon and former premier Don Dunstan, won’t be voting this election. He’s no longer on the electoral roll. But it would be fun to know which policies Dunstan would have put forward for the next four years.