Senator X – a rolling stone gathers no policies

It's hard to know whether legislation and political controversy exist for Senator Xenophon to make media mileage out of them or whether Senator Xenophon exists as a cipher for the psychological projections of 'hard-done-by' battlers in the southern suburbs of Adelaide.

Hijacking the stimulus package

The one area that the Senator did have a major 'success' was holding the Federal Government to ransom by threating to not pass the urgent Stimulus Package in the wake of the GFC.

He got $900 million of accelerated funding for the Murray-Darling Basin. The money had already been previously promised but it was a 'victory' of sorts.

Should a single senator hold a government 's national $42 billion rescue package to ransom? Senator Xenophon is merely following in former Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine's footsteps. This shows how far the Senate has mutated from representing the interests of the states, to now blocking economic pump priming legislation.

Senator Xenophon's use of the media is curious because it has all of the hallmarks of a 'sideshow'. In South Australia he is lauded because he tells it 'like it is' or at least his version of how it is – or was.

He slings off at political leaders, their advisers and party technocrats who are poll and focused group obsessed. He is 'everyman', a battler and a warrior (or worrier) for truth.

His populist announcements and his media stunts appeal to both the media and the common man. In a memorable stunt, Senator Xenophon used 'Zorba the Goat' (a real goat) to prove he was "not kidding around" in the 2006 South Australian election. He won an astounding 20.5 per cent of the vote.

While Lindsay Tanner's book Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy was critical of the way the media trivialized political debate, Senator Xenophon uses the media to draw the audience over to his personal brand of political performance. His pronouncements are rarely treated with scrutiny because, after all, he represents the 'battlers'.

''The contest of ideas is being supplanted by the contest for laughs,'' Tanner writes. He blames the ''sideshow syndrome'' where the media set up the tricks and holds up the hoops and the politicians cheerfully jump through them to win public attention."

Whether the media is ignoring or "dumbing down" politics, they are all trying to arrest the departure of their audiences in a fragmenting media landscape.

Increasingly, in a post-broadcast, post-regulation media market, organisations feel justified in delivering what they think their audience wants, and by and large that is not serious policy discussion. This is where Senator Xenophon finds his home. He doesn't deliver legislation. He delivers entertainment.

One doesn't gain a sense that power is Senator Xenophon's drug. It seems that he just likes the attention.