Should Nick Xenophon ever stray into an Adelaide pub looking for a quick counter lunch, he may end up waiting a very long time for his schnitty and chips.

If the vibe at a special hospitality industry knees-up at Adelaide Oval on Tuesday night is any guide, the former No Pokies MP, Senator, founder of the now-stalled SA-Best party and, finally, a crash-and-burnt kingmaker, might be better off cracking a tin of baked beans and a schooner of kombucha for a quick feed at home.

The occasion was the formal retirement dinner for Ian Horne, the long-serving CEO of the Australian Hotels Association.

Horne, working hand-and-glove with his friend, publican and businessman Peter Hurley, turned the AHA into the most potent, some might say feared, lobbying outfits this state has ever seen.

So, it was no surprise to see a who’s who of the SA political world sprinkled generously among the roughly 200 guests gathered in the oval’s Ian McLachlan Room to farewell Horne with genuine warmth and generosity of spirit.

It was a surprise to realise, however, that Xenophobia had a seat at the head table.

We shall get to that shortly.

Ian’s dad was a Queensland Salvation Army officer who defected to the even more abstemious Churches of Christ.

When the family moved to Adelaide, Ian went to Cowandilla Primary School and then Henley High, before starting his working life as a motor mechanic, the start of a lifelong love of motorbikes.

At the age of eight, he signed The Pledge to abstain from alcohol.

Taking the podium, Premier Peter Malinauskas rated the AHA as the state’s most effective lobby group.

He’s not wrong about that. When it comes to bending the ear of government, winning policy battles and protecting its members, the AHA makes some other business lobby groups look like hapless amateurs.

And yet, unlike many up-themselves industry groups, even some unions, the AHA remains a down-to-earth outfit with a low rating on the Tosser Index.

The Premier set out his three personal metrics for success in relationships – if you say you’re going to do something, you do it; if you make a deal, you keep it; and finally, integrity.

Ian Horne

The Premier praised Ian Horne for possessing those three qualities in spades, in his dealings with him and the AHA, both in Opposition and in Government, and even while running the Shoppies Union.

It will be interesting to see how voters judge the Premier on his first test when it comes to Labor’s election promise to fix ambulance ramping.

Pubs, decent employers of around 26,000 workers, have a slab of reasons to thank Ian Horne.

He steered SA’s hospitality industry through the big COVID lockdowns when, as he reminded guests, “every pub was closed from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and all places in between”.

But as the night progressed, it became clear to this lone journalist at Table 12, seated next to Opposition Leader David Speirs’ chief of staff, a spin doctor with a fearsome handshake, that Nick Xenophon was on the menu along with the beef fillet and heritage beetroots with parsnip cream.

For the state’s hotel titans, the threat they believed Xenophon posed to their businesses is still raw, five years after they crushed him into political quarry dust at the 2018 election.

In that election campaign, Xenophon had sensationally quit the Senate and was attempting to move back to local politics by contesting the Liberal-held seat of Hartley.

South Australia has had some crazy elections, but this was a doozy.

Barely six weeks from polling day, the Xenophon train was choofing up an amazing head of steam.

He revealed he was fielding 24 SA-Best candidates for the 47 House of Assembly seats, theoretically enough to form majority government with him as Premier.

Then it became 30. Finally, he ran candidates in 36 seats.

Early, heroic opinion polls showed the Xenophon factor posing a threat in at least 10 of these. Even winning half those, or maybe just two or three, could have seen him forming a minority coalition government with either Liberal leader Steven Marshall or Labor Premier Jay Weatherill.

With Xenophon talking about halving poker machine numbers, the hotel industry went into meltdown at the real prospect he could hold the balance of power in a minority government, or in some weird political fantasy, form government in his own right.

It’s not fashionable to kick a corpse, even a political corpse

The AHA launched a brutal, cashed up and devastating campaign to make sure Mr Xenophon became Mr Irrelevance.

They successfully warned he posed a real and present danger to the jobs of all 26,000 workers in the state’s hospitality sector, and to the future of their families.

The AHA advertising ran a killer line: “My job is not a stunt”. It was a direct hit on the Xenophon love of cheesy political stunts to garner free publicity.

At the March 17 election, the Xenophon train wasn’t just stopped dead in its tracks, it ran off the bridge and vanished into a ravine.

Xenophon failed to take Hartley off Vincent Tarzia and SA-Best failed to take a single lower house seat.

They did win two Legislative Council spots, installing Connie Bonaros and Frank Pangallo for eight-year spells.

Fast forward five years to Tuesday night’s AHA function, and it’s clear jumping on the Xenophon grave remains a popular pastime among our publicans.

As a guest, it wouldn’t be fair to single out individual speakers, but let’s just say Horne was the toast of the room for spearheading the campaign that dismantled the Xenophon threat.

Cabaret performer Matthew Griffiths even sang a tribute that included the line: “Stuck the knife into Xenophon, now you’re glad he’s gone.” At least it rhymed.

It’s a lesson in how far and hard an organisation will go to protect itself from a threat, either real or imagined, all while keeping within the rough and tumble boundaries of a democracy.

It’s a shame some of our politicians don’t work that hard to protect their “shareholders” – the Australian community – from the very real threats to their livelihoods posed by the Reserve Bank’s interest rate spree.

Lamely telling families they know they’re “feeling the squeeze” of the cost-of-living crisis isn’t in the same league as “my job is not a stunt”, is it?

Rather than acting like innocent bystanders to the carnage facing Australian families, they might like to try rolling their sleeves up and getting their hands dirty defending them.

Nick Xenophon has returned to his day job of practising law, or as he puts it, suing public hospitals for medical negligence over the many awful outcomes for patients.

When I contacted him for comment, he responded in trademark style.

“While I’ve heard of sore losers, these people are sore winners,” he said.

“It’s not fashionable to kick a corpse, even a political corpse.

“At least one section of the community still remembers me. Clearly, they all suffered so terribly at my hands.

“The bad news for these jokers is while they got rid of me, the (poker) machines will always be an issue, because these machines will keep harming countless South Australians, people will keep losing their pay packets, their homes and face bankruptcy.”

The AHA would argue its harm minimisation programs, including facial recognition technology to monitor problem gamblers, lead the nation.

For the record, Xenophon says he doesn’t darken the doors of pubs with pokies but is a regular at Campbelltown’s Café Settebello where they do “huge schnitties”.

Five years on, and no humble pie on anyone’s menu.

Matthew Abraham’s political column is published on Fridays. Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.