David Penberthy: Those who continue to stand with Dan in the wake of a litany of failures by the Victorian Government are just deluded Kool-Aid skolling dimwits

Anyone who continues to “stand with Dan” amid the litany of clear failures by the Victorian Government in the handling of the pandemic are the most deluded halfwits this side of Pyongyang, writes David Penberthy.

The hashtag #IstandwithDan is the modern-day equivalent of those 1970s “I’m with Stupid” T-shirts that bore a large arrow pointing to the person next to you.

Much has been written and said about whether the Victorian Premier should be known as Dictator Dan or Chairman Dan.

The more juvenile members of the Victorian Liberal Party even conducted an online poll about it. I am less interested for the purposes of this column in Dan’s totalitarian credentials, impressive as they may be, than in the blind, Kool-Aid skolling fanaticism of his loyal army of followers, who would have to be the most rusted-on band of deluded halfwits this side of Pyongyang.

I cannot for the life of me see how any sentient being can look at the performance of the Andrews government and regard it as deserving some showy statement of solidarity on social media.

It’s not a Labor or Liberal thing, either. Until Dan Andrews came along and said “hold my beer”, the pre-eminent klutz of the lockdown was the NSW Liberal Health Minister, Brad “Don’t Blame Me” Hazzard, over the Ruby Princess debacle.

Until Dan Andrews came along, the pre-eminent klutz of the lockdown was NSW Health Minister Brad Hazard, writes David Penberthy. Picture by Wayne Taylor.

But on two key fronts — spreading the virus and tracking it once it spread — the Victorian government has been in a dunce’s class of its own through the absurd use of untrained private security guards and the in­adequacy of its contact tracing regime.

I Stand With Dan? Read this.

In its hearings last Thursday, the Victorian hotel quarantine inquiry was told how two security guards, who were untrained subcontractors, were caught having sex while working at Melbourne’s Swanston Street Rydges Hotel, while others were hassling nurses for their mobile numbers so they could “hook up”; others were caught urinating on bathroom floors, and others still were caught stealing food out of residents’ bags.

At the same time, three young children in quarantine became so distressed by their incarceration that they started smearing the hotel room walls with their own excrement.

Their mother was hysterical and while the private security guards were busy putting the moves on nurses, one nurse managed to dodge their advances long enough to enter that infernal room and hoover up the shit with a vacuum cleaner.

Still standing with Dan? The answer for many remains: yep, 100 per cent.

A great friend and former colleague of mine who works at a rival news organisation found out the hard way this week how feral Dan’s devotees are when it comes to any valid scrutiny of his government. Phil Coorey is the straightest journo you could imagine; he’s not left, not right, and he approaches his job with impeccable detachment and has been awarded repeatedly for doing so.

Writing in The Australian Financial Review this week in a piece headed “Victoria’s response a litany of government failure”, Coorey explained how Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper had been wrongly pilloried by Andrews’s critics for an exclusive page-one article that accurately predicted Victoria’s onerous path out of lockdown.

Coorey’s meticulous piece laid the blame squarely for the Victorian mess at the feet of the Victorian government.

“Andrews has been caught dissembling again,” Coorey wrote.

“No wonder he didn’t want to address the substance of the leak on Wednesday, given the visceral reaction to the final product …Victoria’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been a litany of government failure. It failed quarantine and then it failed to have the adequate contact tracing protocols in place, which enabled the virus to spread.

“When forced to shut down the state, it failed to properly consult business and ­announced a series of closures riddled with unintended consequences.”

Cartoon by Mark Knight.

Correct, correct, correct. For the chief crime of accuracy, Coorey spent most of this past week being denounced on Twitter by Andrews’s acolytes as the lapdog and lick-spittle of the Morrison government.

One of the few things Andrews does have going for him is an often supportive if not ­supine local news media who are not so much blind to his failings but actively in the business of arguing he has none.

How’s this for a column by former ABC broadcaster Jon Faine in this week’s Age?

“The past 48 hours have seen a relentless, short-sighted, reckless and self-interested bullying of Premier Dan Andrews. Thankfully he shows little sign of bowing to the media and corporate pile-on.”

The first point I’d make about this pile of tosh is you can write something so devoid of empathy only if you’ve spent your entire working career being happily remunerated courtesy of the public teat.

The second point is to tackle the absurdity of Faine’s dichotomous “health versus the economy” argument.

It is insulting and absurd to describe negative reaction to Andrews’s draconian roadmap out of a mess of his own creation as a “corporate pile-on”. It suggests the married couple running a coffee shop or the young mum working as a personal trainer is some sort of capitalist robber-baron.

The health challenge and economic challenge of the pandemic are wholly intertwined. The mass unemployment and loss of income brought about by the more contestable aspects of the lockdown are themselves a health problem. They are also a gigantic mental health problem.

Like Dan Andrews himself — who made the transition from prefect to student politics to political staffer to backbencher to minister to premier — you get the sense a lot of these “I Stand With Dan” dopes have never done a real day’s work in their lives, never had to live with the panic and uncertainty of making a living under their own steam, rather than via the unyielding generosity of the taxpayer.

Their blindly loyal tweets from the Victorian abyss are the official language of an age where ideology and allegiance trumps accuracy and honesty.