Warning to other premiers: Avoid these four major errors Daniel Andrews has made

It is staggering how much damage Daniel Andrews has done to Victoria. These are the four lessons other premiers need to learn from his disastrous decisions.

Learn from this disaster, you other premiers. Come see how Daniel Andrews stuffed Victoria.

LESSON ONE: Making stupid promises you can’t keep.

Andrews is now boasting he saved taxpayers by scrapping the 2026 Commonwealth Games he claims could have cost $7bn.

Wrong. He instead cost Victorians up to $1bn by bidding for Games he could never afford, and for which he must now pay compensation.

Other costly promises he’s broken include a fast-rail link to Geelong and a rail link to the airport.

Daniel Andrews has cost Victorians up to $1bn by bidding for Games he could never afford. Picture: AFP

LESSON TWO: Thinking you know it all.

Arrogant Andrews thought up the Suburban Rail Loop with a few yes-men and locked out some real experts. Result: likely costs rocketed from $50bn to $125bn.

Worse, Andrews ignored engineering realities and thought he could safely dismantle the state’s coal-fired generators.

Wrong. Power prices soared and the Australian Energy Market Operator says Victoria risks blackouts by 2026.

LESSON THREE: Having delusions of grandeur.

Andrews ordered a Commonwealth Games like no other, centred not on one city but five regional areas (where Labor wanted to win seats). Of course it was unaffordable.

Andrews also thought Victoria could help stop a climate crisis by going green. But there’s no crisis and Victoria wouldn’t make any difference.

An artist's impressions of how an athletes village in Victoria could have looked.

LESSON FOUR: Just being incompetent.

Andrews wasted $1.1bn by tearing up a contract to build a road – the East-West Link.

His quarantine hotels were run so badly that the Covid-19 virus kept escaping, killing hundreds. He battered his economy by ordering a world-record lockdown of Melbourne, based on ludicrous assumptions.

He’s spent so grandly, and infrastructure projects have blown out so badly, that Victoria’s debt is about to top that of NSW and Queensland combined.

Now Andrews is making things worse by the way he’s trying to dig himself out of his financial disaster, like hiking his tax take by 15.7 per cent over four years.

He’s increased payroll tax on big business – a tax on jobs. He’s going to tax richer private schools – a tax on education.

He’s increased land taxes on second properties – hurting renters. He’s now floating restrictions on rent rises – which would decrease rental supplies and punish people who invested for their retirement.

He also frightened off investment in gas, with crazy exploration bans.

I’m staggered how this one man can cause so much harm to my state.

Now the reckoning is coming. Be warned, you other premiers.

Originally published as Warning to other premiers: Avoid these four major errors Daniel Andrews has made