Victorians aren’t stupid their options are limited | David Penberthy

As with the MAGA brigade, the #Istandwithdan crew are the local manifestation of the tedious and troubling trend worldwide, writes David Penberthy.

About 12 hours before the nation awoke to the bizarre and embarrassing news that the Victorian Government had torn up its contract to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, the ABC was screening the final episode of a stunning documentary about San Francisco pastor Jim Jones and the horrendous demise of the Jonestown cult in Guyana.

Needless to say they were two quite unrelated events. But in the wash-up from the Commonwealth Games bombshell, with Dan Andrews’ army of acolytes desperate to defend the Victorian Premier at all costs, I kept thinking about Jim Jones.

Victoria has now become Danstown. It’s a cult that differs only in the absence of violence, but is led by someone who unencumbered by any challenger or opposition can get away with spouting the purest nonsense before an adoring legion of followers who accept everything he says.

It is puzzling how this came to pass in a country like ours which invented a bumper sticker which reads “Don’t vote, it only encourages the bastards”.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

One of the things that has defined politics in Australia is a healthy scepticism towards those seeking or holding power. Our starting point is to presume that anyone in politics is an egomaniac and a jerk, and to work our way backwards from there in the hope of being pleasantly surprised to the contrary.

In Victoria though, we have a bloke who can commit one of the most extraordinarily inept manoeuvres in the modern history of Australian politics, the response being that #thankyoudan becomes the number-one trending topic on Twitter as his supplicants rally behind their dear leader.

None of this is some attack on the decent and long-suffering people of Victoria, who endured one of the world’s longest lockdowns and are now suffering punishing taxes and lumbered with massive state debt as a result.

I have seen people say Victorians must be stupid to have returned the Andrews Government with such a comfortable majority after all this. They’re not stupid, they probably felt like they had no choice.

The Victorian Liberals have been such a factionally-riven rabble with an inch-deep talent pool that they seemed to offer no competent alternative.

I have a lot of friends in Melbourne and many of those who voted for Labor did so not out of zealotry but a world-weary resignation and ambivalence, fulled by the the fact that there didn’t appear to be anyone else.

But for the purposes of this piece, it’s the zealots who interest me, even more than Dan Andrews does. Andrews is merely the uniquely happy beneficiary of combining genuine political mediocrity with a cultish level of acclaim.

His fans are the left-wing version of the MAGA mob in the United States, Donald Trump’s standing idiot army which shares his baseless conviction that he won the last election.

And as with the MAGA brigade, the #Istandwithdan crew are the local manifestation of the tedious and troubling polarisation of politics worldwide, which now sees friendships ended and families divided as we lose the ability to agree to disagree.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump. Picture: Drew Angerer

They put on an absolute clinic in the wake of the Commonwealth Games bombshell as they aped Sergeant Frank Drebin from The Naked Gun in declaring: “Please disperse people, nothing to see here” as the fireworks went off.

Looking at this story impartially I can think of eight legitimate angles.

There’s the electoral angle, with valid questions being asked as to whether voters in eight Victorian country seats were conned by Labor’s promise that they would share in the excitement and benefits of the first ever regional Commonwealth Games.

There’s the transparency angle with massive question marks over the veracity of Labor’s claim to have modelling showing the Games would now cost $6-$7 billion to stage, a figure rubbished by Games organisers.

There’s the marketing angle for Victoria with the damage it does to the state’s boast that Melbourne is “the sporting capital of Australia”.

There’s the human angle for all the athletes who have trained so hard only to have their dream of competing here at home dashed by the cancellation.

There’s the economic angle for all the businesses that will now miss out on the spoils that would have been shared across hospitality, retail, transport and accommodation – the very businesses smashed hardest by the Andrews lockdown.

There’s the budgetary angle with the hit on treasury coffers as the Government coughs up millions for dishonouring the Games contract, in addition to the losses already incurred paying for the bid, and for travel and man hours for the public servants tasked with delivering the project.

There are political angles at the state level as to whether Labor internally will hold the line on all this, whether the Liberals will enjoy a resurgence, and also lesser federal angles worth noting, such as the insistence by the PM to having no prior knowledge of the cancellation.

All valid angles, but the response from the I-Stand-With-Dan crowd is to denounce all scrutiny of him as baseless persecution by a biased media.

It’s laughable, made even more laughable by the fact that these doe-eyed souls completely swallowed his nonsense that he was doing all this for the kiddies and the sick, saying axing the Games was all about schools and hospitals.

Prioritising spending on schools and hospitals isn’t an excuse for dishonouring the bid at the 11th hour. It’s an argument for not bidding in the first place. There are school kids studying Year 10 economics who could tell you that the risk and reward from hosting the Commonwealth Games has always been iffy.

It’s pitiable to watch the clunky cogs churning inside the mind of the second-biggest government in Australia as they grapple with such questions. Beyond embarrassing. And for those who cheer on this amateurish garbage as government at its finest, much more embarrassing still.