Saint Nick Xenophon of South Australia

Xenophon has enemies. Everyone in the Liberal and Labor parties for starters. Nick is the underdog and in the land of the underdog (we're knee deep in dogs in SA), this is good news. Although the fact he is a Prince Alfred College Old Scholar and a graduate from the University of Adelaide Law School, makes him a well-groomed dog.

SA Federal Liberal MP Jamie Briggs said in the media recently that the problem with "personality cult parties is that you have no idea who or what you are really voting for." I'm sure the people who voted for Jamie think the same.

Even that old fox, John Howard has got in on the act. He recently said, "the major parties get an unfair rap when people are disgruntled with living standards because they are seen as being in some way responsible, because they actually are in office or have been in office. Whereas the other parties like Nick Xenophon's mob, they've never been in office and they're not likely to be in office and therefore they don't attract the same opprobrium."

Who would dare call the major parties responsible? The Liberals are scared. Another reason is that in a double-dissolution election, Xenophon's quota for winning a Senate seat is halved from 14.29 to 7.69 per cent.

Xenophon has had one Senate career win (sort of) - the Murray water buyback scheme, which the Federal ALP was going to pass any way. He held a gun to the head of the Rudd Government during the GFC crisis to get it, thereby endangering Australia's entire fiscal security but that's old news now.

Xenophon rode to success on the back of SA's media. It's hard to write cogently about SA's media without conjuring up more mixed metaphors, most of which have to do with excrement. Online newspaper InDaily (M-F), (which I contribute to) is doing well and the ABC, now run by a reporter and two kelpies, still manages to accurately report the news. If you're in the eastern states, let's just say the The Advertiser (News Corporation) makes the NT News look like The Washington Post. 'The Tiser' has some excellent reporters but the news agenda, driven by management, is 'truth' chemotherapy.

The rise of Saint Nick has fundamentally been supported – even lauded – by The Advertiser and its mates. No surprises there. It's like the craven coward at school who sides with the popular boy, hoping some of his popularity will rub off on him. But alas, the circulation figures and falling ad spends, still wait for him after school to punch his lights out.

But if Saint Nick has been chauffeured to the top by the public, the people who opened the door for him are the SA ALP and Liberals. A surfeit of lawyers, the lack of distinction between the two parties, ALP ministerial incompetence and the fact that the state is producing the SDP of Ethiopia, makes a career in state politics look enticing for anyone struck by intellectual poverty. Good money, good super and you don't need to do much as the bloated public service runs the show. In the land of the lowest common denominator, Saint Nick is golden.

It's all a bit of a laugh really, this democracy caper for Nick. It's the glib throwaway line; it's the gag, the stunt, the pie in the face, the Westminster system, the fart cushion; it's Punch and Judy; a combined unemployment and under employment level in SA of around 18 per cent; it's making policy on the run to fill the news gap; it's Reg Varney and 'On the Buses' meets representative democracy. 'Ullo, what's all this then Gov? The balance of power in the Senate?' But one can't help like him.