Erin Molan: Arrogant Daniel Andrews is perfect example of gaslighting

Cancelling the Commonwealth Games was bad enough, but Dan Andrews seemed to take delight in announcing one of the biggest ever backflips seen outside a gymnastics arena, writes Erin Molan.

It wasn’t so much the fact that Daniel Andrews canned the Commonwealth Games this week, it was the way in which he did it.

The arrogance of the delivery was mind-blowing, even from a leader who has been rewarded by his constituents for some of the worst policy failures in Australian history.

I thought it was a joke initially, some kind of ill-timed April Fools prank, or a publicity stunt aiming to piggyback on the phenomenal interest in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. But no. Dan Andrews almost seemed to take delight in announcing one of the biggest ever backflips seen outside a gymnastics arena.

There was no contrition, no acceptance of fault, no “owning of one’s behaviour”.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews during the state funeral of Simon Crean at St Pauls Cathedral in Melbourne. Picture NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis

What we witnessed this week was the greatest public display of gaslighting since Bronson from Married At First Sight (if you are anti-reality TV, Google it).

According to the top result on Google, “gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which the guilty party attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind”.

For example — and it’s most often used in relationships — a husband might lie to his wife. If she finds out and confronts him, he might tell her she’s ‘insecure’, ‘irrational’ and ‘paranoid’ rather than owning his behaviour, apologising and facing the consequences — whatever they may be.

See where I’m going here?

This is a direct quote from the Victorian Premier’s announcement: “I’ve made a lot of difficult calls, a lot of very difficult decisions in this job. This is not one of them.”

He goes on to assure us all that he’s “not going to apologise” in case we were under any misconception.

Is he serious? I get that they call him Teflon Dan for a reason.

Hell, I even understand to a degree that if you haven’t ever been held accountable for your behaviour then it’s very difficult not to begin to believe you are always right.

But surely, even if he’s completely lost the plot, one of his minders would have perhaps told him that apologising was absolutely the right thing to do.

Even if it’s not your fault, sometimes you apologise because people have been hurt. It’s good manners.

Cartoonist Warren Brown’s view.

It is Dan’s fault. He committed to something, perhaps somewhat dubiously that now appears to have no political purpose, so he’s dumped it. The least he can do is apologise to the thousands of people who are devastated and completely blindsided.

Athletes, families, fans, administrators, businesses, local communities in regional Victoria — it’s a big list.

People have been hurt and let down significantly, so an apology would be, one imagines, the first thing that might come to a reasonable person’s mind — and definitely to a politician’s.

In a situation that is eerily familiar to us, there was no ownership that he and his government had screwed up — monumentally.

There is currently a conga line of internal stakeholders and external observers providing seemingly conclusive evidence that the few facts Dan is willing to divulge are incorrect — the amount of money involved, the circumstances of the bid (did they chase it or step up to help out?), when the blowout was identified, the promises made.

The “mock outrage” expressed when asked why, as though the miserable media types would rather money be wasted on an extravagance than pumped into schools and hospitals, was in equal parts disconcertingly familiar to us and offensive.

The superior manner and disrespect on display obscured the facts that these exact concerns were raised by many 18 months ago and completely ignored by the Victorian government. Most people accept the apparent escalation in costs is unacceptable for a state so riddled with debt, but the Spring St pollies and mandarins knew that before they committed.

This is Dan gaslighting — trying to come across as the ‘hero’ for putting Victorian children and patients “first” when he was the one who put them “last” as he signed up to this glorious deal last year.

In 2014 Daniel Andrews underwent a makeover and became Dan in a quest to enhance his popularity with voters and lead Victorian Labor to an election win.

Also included with the name change were snappy jeans, well-cut jackets, expensive boots, designer glasses, and elocution, or speech training. Presumably the speech training wasn’t to fundamentally alter his language or dogmas, for example that expressed in his 2003 inaugural speech, that “I believe this is an honourable profession”.

He won in 2010, of course, and has led the state ever since.

Supporters and opponents agree that he is ruthless, and journalist Sumeyya Ilanbey’s recent biography reports that some of his cabinet colleagues regard him as a narcissist.

Dan doesn’t seem too focussed these days on enhancing his appeal to the electorate, or indeed giving a tinker’s cuss what anyone thinks of him, providing the electorate continues to judge him as the best thing on offer at the ballot box

The term gaslighting is so often used as, inappropriately, a weapon, which is one of the reasons why I hate it. People accuse others of gaslighting to shut down a legitimate argument or shirk accountability themselves.

I wish that were the case here, but no, Dan Andrews, you embody the term perfectly and there’s no gaslighting from me here.