The man hungry to be at the helm The dysfunctional Liberal Party will tomorrow elect a new leader after the resignation of Isobel Redmond. MICHAEL McGUIRE interviews the man who would be king, Steven Marshall. STEVEN Marshall roughly shoulders his way past me. Just a second earlier he'd yelled something about "letting out the jib" prompting me to venture tentatively towards the front of the rocking yacht while wondering what the hell he was talking about. Now he's bumping by to heave mightily on red and white ropes. This is Steven Marshall, a man in a hurry. And one who is not afraid to shunt slow-moving players out of the way. He is also a man who, while virtually unknown to the wider community and as a rookie MP, is likely to become the next leader of the Liberal Party tomorrow, replacing Isobel Redmond who quit last week. But today he has moved too late. A fluky wind as we make our way from the dock at the Cruising Yacht Club at North Haven has caught Marshall, weighed down by the amateur crew of a land-loving reporter and a preoccupied photographer, unawares and we are suddenly becalmed. And, as Marshall admits later, stranded on a sand bar. No matter, Marshall takes off his T-shirt, jumps in the water and starts pushing the yacht in the right direction. There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere about sinking ships, the Liberal Party and Steven Marshall but I'll leave that to your imagination. You can certainly see the headline generator at work in the Marshall brain as he tries to work a way out of this. I know this because only half an hour before, as he was wrestling with a dodgy Yamaha outboard, he pipes up with: "False start for Marshall." I mention he sounds a little paranoid and he agrees with the assessment. In this, as in many things, the 45-year-old is something of a contradiction. He is a social animal, at ease with the media and his exemplary cultivation of the local pack since his election as Member for Norwood in March 2010 is one of the reasons behind his rapid ascent. Yet he has a curious defensiveness as well. Time and again he asks whether or not he needs to be worried about how he will be portrayed in this piece. He is concerned about the boat - with the unfortunate name Public Enemy - and how his ownership of it will be portrayed. When his fondness for life on the waves was first revealed, Labor minister Tom Koutsantonis tweeted: "That's the SA Liberals for you, the haves and the have yachts." But Marshall insists the Elliott 7.8m yacht is no "luxury liner" but instead a racing boat primed for some "gritty sailing." And it's true that sailing has been a lifelong passion. He started at the Largs Bay Sailing Club as a child and represented the state. Apart from the yacht there is also the beach shack at Black Point, the well-known millionaires' row on Yorke Peninsula. It would have been at least 25 years ago (when his family bought it). It was not millionaires' row at all. It didn't even cost $50,000. It was just a shack," Marshall insists. "I feel sometimes like there are all these things out there conspiring to make me look like a silver spooner," he says with a laugh stuck somewhere between joy and pain. Yet if he is really worried, he is the one of the most helpful interview candidates I have encountered. Always available for a chat, willing to change his diary for a picture or two. He even informs me that the Liberal media advisers have warned him against doing a picture on his boat. Perhaps Marshall is still to develop that rock-hard shell and thousand-yard stare that most seasoned politicians carry. He is still his own man and seems determined to do things his way, the way he did in the business world. It all gives rise to the sense Marshall is still something of a stranger in a strange land when it comes to the world of politics. He's not sure of the ground rules, still feeling his way and not sure who, if anyone, he should trust. It makes it difficult to predict how he will perform if he is leader. Marshall's inexorable rise since March 2010 has been accompanied by little scrutiny and how well he reacts to the constant pressure of leadership will define how well he copes in the job. It has been a remarkable ascent since Marshall won Norwood from long-term incumbent Labor member Vini Ciccarello. Within that span, he has moved from backbencher, to frontbencher, to winning the deputy leadership last year and now finds himself on the verge of running the whole show. Part of his rise is due to the obvious lack of talent within the Liberals and another part is down to Marshall's own intelligence, social skills and ferocious work ethic. Adding to the surprise factor of the Marshall ascendency is that he didn't even join the Liberal Party until late in 2007. "I come to politics from a completely different route to most people inasmuch as I was never involved in student politics or young Liberals," he says. I had always voted Liberal and always shared the core liberal philosophy, but I never joined the party and I wasn't particularly politically motivated at all. The turning point, he says, was the re-election of Mike Rann's Labor Government in 2006. "I became increasingly interested in politics after the 2006 election and that is when I really thought to myself that I don't like where South Australia is going," he says. I felt like we were just treading water. I couldn't see any actual action and I became increasingly verbose in my criticism. Eventually, friends just said 'Shut up or do something about it'. Rightly or wrongly, I decided to do something about it. Marshall, a divorced father of two teenage children, has lived in Kensington since 1993 and decided to run for the seat of Norwood, even though his house was a street outside the electorate, in Hartley, which is held by Labor's Grace Portolesi. In part, he was sponsored by Liberal powerbroker Christopher Pyne, who also helped John Gardner in the adjoining seat of Morialta, but he has cultivated allies across factional lines in the Liberal Party, another reason for his likely election as leader. Liberal frontbencher Vickie Chapman was involved in his campaign, while the veteran Upper House member Rob Lucas was assigned as a mentor. Lucas was immediately impressed and told colleagues Marshall was the most impressive new candidate he had seen since John Olsen was elected in 1979. In the months leading up to the election, Marshall was a frequent visitor to Parliament House, sitting in the public galleries at night trying to figure out how the institution worked. Marshall was not the first in Lucas's experience to do this but it's sufficiently rare for it to be worth remarking on. "There have been many examples of people who have done well in their own previous careers and have either struggled to make a quick transition or never fully make it," Lucas says. It is such a different institution you just can't waltz in here and start directing people and ordering people around. You build networks, support groups, friendships, bridges. But there was more to Marshall than just a capacity for hard work. "He's got some of the natural attributes of successful politicians," says Lucas. He's got common sense and a natural touch and flair with people; he's got the grit, the ambition to be successful in Parliament and politics. Until politics, Marshall was immersed in the world of business. It was a world he was born into. His father, Tony, started the successful Marshall Furniture in the 1970s and built it into a $15 million-a-year company. Sitting in his comfortable seafront Henley Beach home, Tony is the model of the self-made man. His father was a wharfie, he grew up in a Housing Trust home at Seaton, was an apprentice at Holden and an engineer in the navy before starting his own company. Marshall Sr reckons he was a Labor voter until he was about 30 when he made the transition to the other side of politics, but didn't join the Liberal Party until Steven nominated for Norwood - as an act of solidarity. The family was raised in Semaphore Park and Tony paints a picture of a childhood of relentless activity. The beach was just down an alley and Steven and his two younger sisters, Kerrin and Jenny, were frequent visitors. There was surf lifesaving, sailing, swimming and a variety of other sports. "He was a very good kid," says his dad. We had very little problem with him at all, to be honest. PRIMARY school was at Ethelton, which explains why Steven is a Port Adelaide supporter. Secondary school was Immanuel College before studying a business degree at the Institute of Technology and a Masters of Business Administration at Durham University, England. Tony always assumed Steven would follow him into the family business, but he had broader interests as well. His son served on charity and industry boards and was chairman of the Family Business Association of SA. "I was having a lot of trouble with a bad back and I wanted to get out and let him take over," Tony says. He took over for a couple of years but it wasn't what he wanted to do. I think it was too confined. The company was sold to a German group, Steinhoff International, which went on to buy Freedom Furniture. Steven remained with Steinhoff for several years before working for a range of local companies, including soil group Jeffries, venerable family company Michell and Strategic Data Management. To his father, it seemed as if his son had a lucrative and successful career ahead. He was shocked when he left it all behind to enter politics. "My wife (Barbara) and I looked at each other and thought this hadn't been in our thinking," he remembers. I really tried to persuade him to stay with these directorships he was doing, but he was focused. He thought differently. Apart from anything else, it meant a "huge" drop in pay. If, occasionally, this new world seems to leave Steven Marshall perplexed, he is attacking it with vigour. He's up at 5.15am every day, can be seen at Argo's coffee shop at 6.30am before heading either to his office across from Norwood Oval, to Parliament House or to any other of a host of potential engagements. He rejects the claim he is a workaholic, rationalising that if he is up early he can get more done and then spend more time with son Charlie, 15, and daughter Georgie, 13. Often, he says, he will do a couple of hours' work in the office before dashing home to make the kids' breakfast and take them to school. It's true he's becoming increasingly fascinated by politics. After our aborted sail, we spent an hour in the carpark with a couple of beers, ruminating on the state of politics in SA. But, at the same time, it's hard to see him in the game for the long haul unless he's wielding some power in Government. He won't sit on the Opposition benches for an eternity like some of his colleagues. "You won't find Steven Marshall in politics for the next 30 years," he says. Not that's he's putting limits on himself and certainly won't be drawn on what he would do if the Liberals lose next year's election, extending the party's time in Opposition to 16 years. "Maybe I am naive but I don't contemplate that," he says. The Parliament Marshall entered has changed vastly in a short time. His first days were spent observing Mike Rann as premier and Kevin Foley as treasurer. He won't admit it but it seems to have left something of an impression on him and, perhaps, even influenced his own mode of operation. "You did see why they were such dominant players for such a long period of time when you saw them in action," he says. They were formidable Question Time players, formidable. His own performances in the parliamentary theatre of Question Time have been similarly robust. Indeed, he seems to have developed a parliamentary version of Tourette's syndrome, constantly interjecting and baiting the Government. It led to him being thrown out of the chamber six times last year. But it has worked. He has got under the skin of some in the Government, notably Koutsantonis, who baits him frequently inside and out of Parliament. If he is elected tomorrow, it will be curious to see how he fits in with the Liberal leadership group, which encouraged former leader Isobel Redmond to pursue a small-target strategy since the 2010 election. It's not likely to be an approach that Marshall is happy with. Keeping discipline in the notoriously fractious, often vicious world of internal Liberal Party politics is a skill that has evaded many of his predecessors. The next election is just over a year away. There is no doubt Marshall will be running full tilt from now until election day. It's clear he doesn't know any other way.