Steve Price: Dan, Victoria needs you to quit now

Dan, you’re a dreadful premier and an awful leader. Victorians are as desperate as ever for a fresh start and to escape from the horror show that has been the Andrews government.

Steve Price has written an open letter calling for Andrews to step down.

Dear Daniel,

I know you prefer to consume social media than traditional newspapers and radio programs, but I urge you to read this letter.

It’s written in the great Aussie tradition of doing the right thing by your mates. Daniel, you need to quit, to step down and celebrate what you believe to be your achievements. Victorians are desperate for a fresh start and an escape from the horror show you are leading us into.

It’s time to go and give someone else a chance to fix the mess you have created. John Cain walked away gifting Joan Kirner the mess he had created, and she made it worse. Building societies collapsed along with the State Bank and Victoria became known as the rust bucket State.

In hindsight, compared with your carpet bombing of the once great State of Victoria, it was reasonably healthy back then. At least then there was a strong Opposition and Jeff Kennett took the tough decisions needed at that time. Even though there is no Kennett this time around and the Opposition is weak and ineffectual, it’s you that needs to go and maybe what’s left of your Labor Party might just survive.

Daniel, amid all your problems, key Ministers like James Merlino and Martin Pakula have walked away, shrinking the Labor talent pool.

The time is now for Premier Daniel Andrews to quit, writes Steve Price. Picture: Tony Gough

Yes, you are a factional warrior and no one — critics included — have any doubt you are a formidable politician, but you are a dreadful Premier and an awful leader.

Please just go Premier.

I guess you will want to be patted on the back for Victoria’s massive, Melbourne-focused infrastructure build but the problem is most of us will be dead before it’s finished. The Suburban Rail Loop is a vanity project we cannot afford, and most don’t want.

Back in June it was estimated major project cost blowouts had hit $28.1 billion. And an auditor general report two years ago showed 63 per cent of 110 projects examined had changed total cost, and the completion date of another 43 per cent of those 110 builds would not be on time. So much for the pat on the back!

Can I gently remind you, northeast Link’s promised cost of $5 billion is now estimated to be $18 billion, the disastrous West Gate Tunnel promised to cost $500 million was revised to $5.5 billion and now is expected to cost $10.8 billion.

The blowouts and delays are nothing to be proud of.

Sadly though, Daniel, as bad as the tearing up of taxpayers’ money is, it’s the long- term reputational damage you have done and are doing that’s really starting to bite for Victorians. The once proud sporting capital of Australia sat in dumbfounded silence that has now turned to anger as you ripped up the Commonwealth Games contract and told the world we were pulling out.

That was a bastard act and could well be your darkest day if it wasn’t for the fact you locked us up longer during Covid that anywhere else in the world, bungled aged care quarantine — resulting in vulnerable people dying — and then sat in an inquiry and said you “didn’t recall”.

You wanted us to thank you for keeping us safe, but the power went to your head as people were told they couldn’t sip an alcoholic drink from a straw in a takeaway cup or take their children to a playground.

Not satisfied, you imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on everyone except permit holders that even the compliant police force didn’t want to enforce.

You should have quit after that, but no, you had more damage to inflict on your way out. Soft on crime and determined to soften bail laws and raise the age at which a child can be charged you now preside over a gang related crime wave being carried out by 14- year-olds and younger. Home invasions and vehicle thefts happen across the city every night and you are negotiating with indigenous Victorians dividing our legal and criminal system along racial lines.

Daniel Andrews has ruined Victoria so it’s time for somebody else to step in and fix up the mess. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Deep in debt, your solution for Victoria is to tax your way out of the problem. Land taxes on second properties have increased by so much we learnt this week a quarter of Melbourne property investors sold at least one rental home in the last year, taking thousands of homes out of the rental market.

Daniel, we are now seen as the second worst State in Australia to be a landlord, only ahead of Tasmania.

We have dropped from second and who would be surprised given you dropped the tax-free threshold for a second property from $300,000 to $50,000. No wonder the Hume Highway is packed with Victorians fleeing the state.

Not content, Daniel, with driving property investors out of the state you turned your radical left view of the world onto employers. Despite sending so many broke during Covid you saw the bosses as an easy target, increasing Work Cover levies by a whopping 42 per cent.

Please take this letter in the spirit it is intended. I can write it because I’m not one of the tens of thousands of public servants that you’ve bloated the public service with since coming to office and who rely on you for their salary.

I can write it because I’ve covered over the years Labor premiers I greatly admired. People like Don Dunstan and John Bannon in South Australia and Steve Bracks and John Brumby in Victoria and even Bob Carr in NSW.

So it’s not political bias here, Daniel, it’s just time to go, to step down and to realise Victorians and Melburnians particularly have had enough. We are tired of your smug refusal to ever admit you are wrong … your ‘my way or the highway’ attitude to colleagues … the blind refusal to see the State is on the brink.

Yes, you won the most recent election but that was more about a hopeless Opposition.

You’d badly lose a popularity contest now so walk away … please, for all our sakes.

Yours,

A concerned Victorian.

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Originally published as Steve Price: Dan, Victoria needs you to quit now