Peta Credlin: Inquiry showed Daniel Andrews is a master of spin
Daniel Andrews has shown he is brilliant at politics but hopeless at governing. He’s such a master of spin, he’ll have Victorians thanking him for saving them from this second wave of COVID even though his government’s incompetence caused it in the first place, Peta Credlin writes.
Opinion
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Watching the conga line of ministers and departmental chiefs front the inquiry into the hotel quarantine debacle must have been heartbreaking for the families of the over 700 Victorians who have lost their lives to the second wave of this virus.
Knowing as we do now, that 99 per cent of infections have been genomically linked to the deliberate choice by the Andrews Government to use untrained private security instead of police or military personnel, their loss can only have been compounded by the failure of anyone — minister or official — to take any semblance of responsibility or even own the fateful decision.
Those hoping for answers when Daniel Andrews finally took the stand on Friday were sorely disappointed.
Like all those before him, he claimed he didn’t know and couldn’t remember, and even as Premier, he wasn’t responsible.
Despite the existence of three letters from the Prime Minister on July 4, 6 and 11 offering defence force support, and countless calls and emails between senior officials, Andrews maintained his carefully honed lines that this was not known to him.
His testimony given under oath at the Inquiry is at odds with a press conference he gave on March 28 where he made clear that private security and Victoria police would be used, and acknowledging the PM’s offer at the just concluded national cabinet, also critically, ADF troops.
As we know now, 80 plus days into lockdown, with more than 20,000 COVID infections, police and military support was never used at Victoria’s quarantine frontline.
Why? We are still, none the wiser.
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This is a Premier who is brilliant at politics but hopeless at governing.
On Friday, he was unfailingly deferential giving evidence and faultless in his message discipline; as we’ve come to expect, it was a master class in spin and subterfuge that will now be distributed far and wide by his sophisticated media operation in the hope that by the eventual end of this lockdown, he’ll have Victorians thanking him for saving them from this second wave even though his government’s incompetence caused it in the first place.
Like the arsonist turning up with the fire brigade.
The Andrews Government political operation is extensive and the best resourced in the country. It is a lesson in the US style campaign techniques delivered via public funds that all taxpayers need to understand.
When Queensland Premier Palaszczuk was pushed recently over her use of over $500,000 of government funds to poll voters on their reaction to her pandemic management, and she replied, ‘everyone is doing it’, have no illusions that Victoria would be at the front of the pack.
Indeed, in its first term, the Andrews Government spent $357 million on advertising, 30 per cent of it online representing the single greatest share outstripping television (25 per cent), print (15.2 per cent) and radio (13.4 per cent), with $88 million explicitly designated for “campaign advertising”.
To avoid any real scrutiny, Andrews deploys an army of taxpayer-funded political staff to craft and disseminate his carefully polled messages. Over the past five years, the cost of salaries for the political staff in his office and that of ministers have almost doubled from $26.6 million in 2015-16 to $49.8 million in 2019-20.
What’s worse, Andrews had more political spin-doctors than there were experts in the public health unit reporting to Victoria’s Chief Medical Officer, Brett Sutton.
Is it any wonder the state is where it is now when spin has replaced pandemic management competency?
But as relevant as the quantum of taxpayer spending is, what’s important is how it is used. By avoiding one-on-one interviews, Andrews delivers his message to the voter via social media networks that bypass traditional news outlets and the critique of professional journalists.
We’re not talking here about posting a few media releases on a website; instead he’s his own ‘news’ publisher using a highly sophisticated operation of marketing experts and filmmakers to create messages and video content that’s deployed on the Premier’s personal Facebook page using the powerful campaigning tools and algorithms of Facebook, with plenty of taxpayer funds to pay to boost his reach, in what is essentially blatant political promotion.
Way back when Julia Gillard was under fire for alleged links to union corruption as a young lawyer, her tactic then was to stand at a press conference and take an hour of questions thereby allowing her boosters to declare she had nothing to hide. But there’s a big difference between taking questions from the media and actually answering them.
Each day for months now, Andrews has taken to the podium and provided viewers with the theatre of transparency with hour-long press conferences and carefully modulated answers all crafted from social media feedback, but truth was the first casualty in this pandemic.
The stagecraft of his press conferences is telling. Everything is orchestrated to appear as open and as genuine as possible when in reality, it’s anything but.
In politics, tone is everything. Calm and rarely letting the mask slip, Andrews radiates a manufactured assurance. Like a patient schoolteacher, he appears to treat each question with respect even though if you analyse what he says, the contempt for some reporters in the room is thinly disguised.
In questions, when it’s clear that his policy has little basis in “expert advice” he just insists that there’s “no alternative”.
Confronted with inconvenient facts, such as his refusal of military help (again at odds with statements on camera in March), he’s a master of denying them with an air of injured innocence.
When he’s under pressure with something he can’t simply deny, such as the days when infection rates were exceeding 700, he went on the attack and blamed Victorians for breaching the rules when in fact as we now know, it was his government’s lack of rules and discipline that let the virus out into the community in the first place.
Those inside the Victorian Labor machine say he’s an incredible micro-manager and that his ego has no peer. He believes if he doesn’t smother the media with his daily hour-long press conferences, there will be a vacuum that a hapless colleague will fill exposing the truth.
Given performances to date from Ministers Pakula, Mikakos (who resigned yesterday after being thrown under the bus by the Premier), and others, there’s some truth in his arrogance; he’s Rudd-esque in that respect.
Labor’s political strategy right now is to relentlessly drive home a message that Victorians will come out of this crisis having been ‘saved’ by the Premier’s lockdowns, and that by deliberately extending the crisis as long as they have, the hope is that voters will instead acclaim Andrews as their saviour.
It’s a political ‘Stockholm syndrome’ of sorts, where the captives over time develop a psychological alliance with their captor.
Despite responsibility for what is undoubtedly the worst government policy failure in Australian history there’s every chance that Andrews would win the next election — not due till November 2022 — given the strength of his operation and the margin needed to throw him out of power.
But Daniel Andrews won’t lead Labor beyond next year.
He knows the economic consequences will come home to roost in 2021, as will the dishonesty behind the branch-stacking affair that’s now put his party into administration in the state.
He will leave, and it will be decades before Victorian small businesses and families pick up the pieces.
* Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm