Peta Credlin: The real Daniel Andrews is finally exposed

What does it say about our democracy when the premier who made Melbourne the world’s most Covid-locked-down city is still comfortably ahead 54-46 in Newspoll and likely to be re-elected?

The Labor leader who unleashed riot police with tear gas and rubber bullets against freedom protesters. Daniel Andrews has run, to put things at their most charitable, an inept, ethically challenged government – yet it seems Victorians want more of it.

Whatever you think of the Liberal-National opposition, the alternative could hardly do a worse job. That seems to reinforce the point I’ll be making in my upcoming Sky News documentary – that this manipulative and authoritarian figure has assumed cult-like status inside the Labor Party and within most of the networks that normally support Labor.

Last week, in an exclusive by Herald-Sun journalist Michael Warner, the young man, Ryan Meuleman, who’d been injured as a teenage cyclist in an accident with the Premier’s car broke his decade-long silence. According to Meuleman, what happened to him is very different from the Andrews version where it was all the cyclist’s fault; instead, he claims he was hit by a “speeding” car that had come “from nowhere”.

What’s more, he claimed the Premier and his wife, who says she was driving, were “slow” to offer the screaming youngster any first aid, instead arguing with each other. And after calling triple-0, Daniel Andrews left the crash site to comfort his own distressed children he’s said, before returning later.

Ryan Meuleman after his accident

Asked repeatedly about this on Thursday, 17 times the Premier repeated his mantra that he’d dealt with this matter before and would make no further comment. On Friday, the Premier again stonewalled nine times while Mrs Andrews, back on the campaign trail with her husband, merely said: “it was a terrible thing, so traumatic for everyone involved. Our kids were really little. Joseph was only five. Daniel’s spoken about this. I’ve spoken about this and I’m going to leave it there”. And then again: “This really traumatic incident happened 10 years ago so I’ve got no further comment to add.”

At no stage did either Mr or Mrs Andrews even express sympathy for Meuleman. And likely to upset the Premier is the fact the story isn’t going away, with a witness to the crash going public in recent days to support Meuleman’s version of events.

Will the re-emergence of this old accident damage Andrews? It’s hard to tell because nothing much seems to have dented him or his government up till now. For years now he has survived scandals that would have badly damaged others, involving not just internal Labor Party issues, but the public service, police – and, of course, gross pandemic mismanagement.

Under Andrews, service delivery has declined while the bureaucracy has grown apace, as highlighted by huge blowouts in ambulance waiting times.

Victoria has become the model for hard-left, woke government.

Nearly every government infrastructure project is massively over budget and behind schedule.

By mid-decade, Victoria’s state debt will exceed the state debt of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined.

Thanks to badly-run hotel quarantine, Victoria had a Covid outbreak that killed 801 people. Yet in a state government that the Premier minutely micro-manages, an inquiry that was set up to fail couldn’t identify any individual who was responsible.

Nor could WorkSafe Victoria, which just happens to have a Labor mate as chair, a former Labor staffer as CEO, and a former Andrews lawyer as consultant.

The Premier’s personal staff is far bigger than that of the PM and his media office is buttressed by a multi-million dollar social media operation, plus sophisticated polling, all paid for by Victorian taxpayers.

When Labor MPs’ staff were used for campaign purposes, somehow that wasn’t the Premier’s fault, even though one of his former ministers swore that it was. When the Victorian branch of the Labor Party was found to be riddled with corrupt practices, likewise no one was to blame – and certainly not the man who’d led the party for the previous dozen years.

In my coming documentary, I talk to the man whose business was closed down by the Andrews government after a health inspector, he alleges, deliberately planted a slug on his premises to the benefit of a council-owned (and state government backed) rival. Ian Cook is now running as an independent in the Premier’s own seat with the pitch that voting for him is a chance to remove the Premier even if you don’t want to change the government.

Most of all, though, I’ve spoken to a lot of Labor insiders – betrayed former ministers, former MPs who have had run-ins with the Premier, and the let-down union officials – for whom the Daniel Andrews’ spell has now finally been broken.

But has it broken for the public at large? This question matters for the whole country, not just Victoria, because – under Andrews – Victoria has become the model for hard-left, woke government. And if he succeeds again, this new Labor-style is coming to a state near you.

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PM TACKLING ENERGY CRISIS WITH ‘SOLUTIONS’ THAT WILL MAKE IT WORSE

Spooked by his broken promise on power prices, Anthony Albanese is talking himself into a corner.

On Friday, he declared that cabinet would meet this week to alleviate soaring energy costs for households and businesses. His trouble is that all the options on the table – industry codes of conduct to pressure companies to “voluntarily” change what they do; direct intervention in the market, such as price caps and ordering companies to break export contracts; and super taxes on company profits to fund handouts to struggling families and employers – would end up making a bad situation worse.

The pre-election pledge to cut annual power bills by $275 per household is now cursing the Albanese government like Julia Gillard’s no carbon tax promise. It should never have been made, given that running power systems to reduce emissions rather than produce affordable and reliable energy has so far always put prices up.

Anthony Albanese is talking himself into a corner.

And as for the quick fixes now being considered, putting a cap on gas prices will increase demand – while reducing supply and driving away investment – is a recipe for rationing. Further, companies that have invested tens of billions to develop Australian gas fields on the strength of forward contracts to overseas customers aren’t exactly going to welcome being ordered to break them. Indeed, almost nothing could do more damage to Australia’s standing as a safe place to invest.

Perhaps the silliest contribution to the energy debate last week was from NSW Treasurer Matt Kean, who demanded that Western Australia provide the other states with its own reserved gas.

Obviously, he doesn’t know that there’s no east-west gas pipeline and no gas import terminals on the east coast either. As every sensible economist knows, the only effective way to reduce prices is to reduce demand or to increase supply.

Even if our energy follies mean that we keep exporting our heavy industry overseas, the rush to electric cars will significantly increase our demand for power; yet all the government can offer is ever more renewable wind and solar power, even though we need power 24/7, not just when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.

Our increasingly desperate need, in order to avoid the energy fate of Europe, is more 24/7, dispatchable power.

That means not allowing any more of our existing coal-fired power stations to close prematurely, cutting through the green tape and state government bans that are stopping any new gas fields, building new coal plants with 40 per cent less emissions than the current ones, and ending the legal ban on nuclear power.

None of that will be on the cabinet agenda this week.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm