This is a minister who has brought down eight state budgets, and today no one cares. Today the reputation under question is familial, not financial.

Kevin Foley is an interesting mix. He’s got some of the same rapscallion humour as Mark Latham, the care and concern of Pauline Hanson, and Pontius Pilate’s love of justice. “Rack ’em, pack ’em and stack ’em,” he said of overcrowding in state jails.

He has the abstinence of WC Fields, the intellect of George Bush. If Kevin Foley came to a T-junction, his automatic reaction would be to turn hard right.

An astute political strategist might know that some softening of his image, particularly to address his self-confessed reputation as a bully and a womaniser, would probably help Labor’s vote in the election just months away.

Mr Foley decided to tell The Advertiser about his private life, full well knowing it would overshadow any analysis of policy. He described himself as sad and lonely, anguished, and not a bad person. “In some ways I’m a bit of a lost soul,” he said. The reaction, unsurprisingly, was not state-wide empathy.

First began the ridicule, intensifying over the weekend. By Monday he was, as The Independent Weekly reported, a foppish figure of fun. Jokes spread. Instead of a softer image, Mr Foley had turned it to goo.

He had admitted his personal problems affected his work. The Opposition’s immediate response was that if the Treasurer wasn’t focussed on the job, it may be time to replace him with someone who was.

It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion. South Australians pay their Treasurer almost $1 million in salary from election to election, and voters have much more at stake – as does their state – than the Treasurer’s salary alone. Their economic future is in the balance and for that, argued the Opposition, we need a treasurer “focussed on the job”.

If this line was pursued and it became an election issue – as surely it could – Mr Foley’s personal problems may have included a forced march to the opposition benches after the March election.

It was a PR disaster.

All that changed on Tuesday, when Mr Foley held another media conference.

“I have been clinically diagnosed with depression,” he told reporters and television cameras, asking first if the press conference was being broadcast live. “It dates back to my early childhood and it is something that I’ve had for most of my life.” It was diagnosed, he said, three years ago.

Normally sceptical reporters purred and at that instant, and from that time on, the Treasurer was back in control of the media conference and his destiny.

It was a PR coup.

“He appeared to hold back tears,” reported The Australian the next day. “He had tears in his eyes throughout,” Channel 7’s Mike Smithson told Leon Byner on 5AA.

In the outpouring of public sympathy, some of his closest observers remained sceptical. “It was perfect timing,” said one parliamentary colleague admiringly. “You couldn’t have written a better script.”

The decision to make the dramatic announcement was made, The Independent Weekly understands, in consultation with the Premier’s principal media adviser, Jill Bottrall. Mr Foley said he had previously told the Premier, the Infrastructure Minister and “close political colleagues” of his condition, and that he told Cabinet before he informed his two adult sons.

“I’ve known Kevin Foley from the early 1980s to 2002,” said former Port Adelaide federal MP Rod Sawford. “I don’t believe I’ve seen any evidence of depression.”

Yet many people have depression and either hide it or fail to recognise it in themselves, let alone others. Drinking is harder to disguise. A year ago, Mr Foley was involved in the “Night of the Long Drinks”, a late-night session at Parliament House with Labor colleagues who were complaining about the Premier’s leadership.

“I’m ready to lead,” he told the MPs as the short-lived plot against the Premier rose and fell. Next morning he denied saying it, only to have it confirmed by witnesses.

“What occurred in Parliament a year ago was a very foolish moment. Now I said to the media the next day that I did not make a statement that was attributed to me by others. Others tell me I did. And at the end of the day, I have to accept that my recollection of the evening may not be correct or reflective of what occurred.”

Could alcohol have caused the memory lapse? Mr Foley denies it. Yet at this and other press conferences, his drinking and alleged aggressive behaviour – he was once “asked” to leave a night spot – are under question.

“Should people taking anti-depressive medication take alcohol at all? The answer is most definitely not,” said respected Adelaide consulting psychologist Dr Chris Hamilton.

“What you have is a neuro-chemical imbalance. You have sufficient uncertainty. At its maximum, alcohol is a poison. At its minimum, it should not be taken in combination with anti-psychotic medication.”

Alcohol itself is a depressive, Dr Hamilton said.

“The proper advice is that you should be very careful with what you do, the hours you keep. You need to live a fairly careful regime. You have to give the chemicals in your mind and brain the best chance to work effectively. You have to try to be in the best physical shape.”

Mr Foley says alcohol does not have to be prohibited in his case of depression because it is a “mild to medium form”.

“There are two types of depression,” said Dr Hamilton. “The first is endogenous, which has a genetic component and can be tracked in families. The second is exogenous, a reactive depression. This usually occurs after an enormous loss – the loss of a loved one, the loss of a limb, a dreadful illness or unemployment.”

But, he says, neither form causes outbursts of anger towards other people.

“Depression is not related to any other behaviour; you can be depressed and still have any style of behaviour known to human kind.”

Mr Foley acknowledges that his displays of temper are not necessarily related to his depression, although he said his behaviour had at times “caused grief”.

Even so, he said, his depression “does not in any way affect the quality of my work”.

“This is not a job stopper,” he pronounced.

“This is not a rebranding or a rebadging or a repositioning of Kevin Foley. It has not affected my ability to deliver eight successive budgets.

“It does not mean I’m incapable of doing this job.”

Mr Foley told the press conference that he had learnt a lot since he separated from his wife. “I’ve learnt how to cook, I’ve learnt how to clean, I’ve learnt that when you throw your clothes in the corner of the bedroom they don’t just mysteriously appear in the wardrobe three days later ironed.”

And, he said, he wanted to put the focus on his job as Treasurer.

The Opposition may well do that now. The Government is under fire for economic policies which will see the state’s primary mental health facility at Glenside partitioned and sold to developers for commercial gain. It will be replaced, in part, by shops, housing and a film studio – with the Treasurer’s imprimatur.

“It is outsourcing and privatising parts of the mental health system,” said shadow mental health minister Dr Duncan McFetridge.

“The Government is ignoring the recommendations of its own report which states the Government should retain Glenside and redevelop it as a stand-alone centre for state-wide specialist mental health services.

“Mentally ill patients will be forced to cope with industrial, retail, commercial and high-rise developments as well as high-density housing.”

At his media conference, Mr Foley told this story: “I know a guy who died last week, someone I used to play footy with. This guy had everything to live for ... (then) his marriage broke up five years ago ... he died in the gutter in Port Adelaide, homeless, and a drunk. That guy never sought help.”

Even had he sought help he wouldn’t necessarily have been able to get it. Those who need counselling the most are usually able to afford it the least.

“And the waiting times at government community centres are unimaginable,” said Dr Hamilton.

Yesterday, the SA branch of the Australian Psychological Society began an initiative, in collaboration with the Salvation Army, to give counselling to Adelaide’s homeless. The society has to do what the State Government doesn’t. Mr Foley says the health budget is already stretched too thin.

In May 2008, the Treasurer – acting on a whim during a phone call and without clearing it first with parliament or the Premier – gave one of Australia’s richest people, media mogul Kerry Stokes, more than a quarter of a million dollars to buy a war medallion which will be kept in Canberra.

This compares with $164,000 the Government allocated this week to re-train 64 people squeezed out in an orange juice company restructure.

The Berri fruit juice company, which has been operating in the Riverland town for three generations, is to close its doors next year and State Employment Minister Michael O'Brien predicts more sackings and job losses around the state between now and the election.

On the same day as that news came, the Government officially announced it would pay companies for not building a new jail.

The Government had called tenders for a new jail before Kevin Foley came up with another idea, which was to allow prison overcrowding. It scrapped the new jail but has decided that the three tendering companies will be paid more than $3 million each for their trouble, for which we get nothing.

The Treasurer admitted there’s no legal obligation to pay them a cent. Ten million dollars, a gratuity. A tip, a thank you.

You could hear the cheers, all the way to Berri.

Meanwhile, yesterday’s Bureau of Statistics figures show a decline of 13,500 full-time jobs in SA last month. In the past six months, 24,300 full-time jobs have been lost, and youth unemployment is now the country’s second highest, at 26.7 per cent. Those figures do not include 600 jobs about to be lost at Bridgestone or the 64 in Berri.

Kevin Foley has always been as big and as newsworthy in his personality as in his economic decisions. He no longer lives in his working-class electorate, and there aren’t many Port Adelaide labourers at the nightclubs in which he represents himself. He mixes more with business than with voters.

Access to his table is by political donation through Labor’s fundraising arm, SA Progressive Business. And when a daily newspaper does a profile story on him, he controls the agenda so that the focus will be on his personality, not his performance. He’s an astute politician, with a gift for timing.

“Someone said to me today: ‘Is this some sort of clever Machiavellian re-positioning for future leadership’,” Mr Foley said last week. “I thought, ‘Yeah righty-oh’, you go public and say you’ve got some sort of serious personal problem. Now I’m going public saying I’ve got depression. Not a good way to launch a leadership bid.”

And not a bad way to stay deputy leader.