John Olsen, South Australia premier 1996-2002, brought down by Motorola affair after privatisation splurge
John Olsen as South Australian premier secured major sports events including the Tour Down Under and V8 Supercar Series.
John Olsen scored a narrow win for the Liberal party in the 1997 South Australian state election, after his failures in 1985 and 1989. Olsen, who had a bitter conservative-moderate rivalry with Dean Brown, was forced to resign as premier in 2001 after being found to have misled the parliament in the Motorola affair.
Olsen was first elected to the House of Assembly in 1979 in the Barossa Valley seat of Rocky River (later Custance). He had been the last mayor of Kadina (1974-77).
After losing the 1989 state election, Olsen spent time as an Australian senator before returning to challenge and lose Brown for state Liberal leadership in 1992. He served as minister (including the information technology) in the Brown cabinet before toppling Brown in a leadership vote in 1996.
Olsen’s narrow election over Mike Rann’s Labor in 1997 meant his minority government had to rely on support from the Nationals and independents.
Among controversial policies, Olsen's government privatised the state-owned electricity industry (Electrcity Trust of South Australia), partly to ease the financial situation due to the State Bank disaster and in response to the Australian National Electricity Market. The state's water supply was privatised in 1996 with a $1.5 billion 15-year contract awarded to United Water, a Veolia subsidiary. Olsen steered water management and conservation projects, including recycling water from Adelaide's Bolivar water treatment plant to the Northern Adelaide Plains. He also endorsed the Barossa Water Project, a water distribution scheme from the River Murray to the Barossa Valley.
He negotiated a $850 million “smart-city” at Mawson Lakes and set up negotiations and construction of the Adelaide-Darwin rail line.The Olsen Government also secured major sports events including the Tour Down Under and V8 Supercar Series.
In 1998, questions grew about a deal Olsen had made with Motorola to build a software centre in Adelaide after becoming the supplier for a government radio network. Olsen told parliament that there had been no discussions with Motorola about the radio contract. This was his undoing. Olsen denied the findings by magistrate Jim Crammond against him but resigned as premier in 2001 and didn’t run for election in 2002.
He later became Australian consul-general to Los Angeles and New York but returned to become active in South Australian affairs, including Liberal Party president from 2017 and heading the Adelaide Football Club.