Neil Mitchell opens up on feud with Daniel Andrews

Neil Mitchell says the reasons for his feud with Dan Andrews are “garbage”, revealing why it’s years since the Premier was on his show.

Neil Mitchell has opened up about his longstanding political feud with Premier Daniel Andrews, saying the reasons for it are garbage.

Andrews hasn’t appeared on the 3AW broadcaster’s program for almost five years, with Catherine Andrews blocking Mitchell on Twitter last year.

Mitchell outlined several possible incidents as to why the Premier had taken his stance.

“I think repeated critical analysis,’’ Mitchell said on his program on Tuesday.

“The last interview was pretty aggressive, it was about Skyrail, he was conducting a survey into Skyrail and before they built it they were doing a study. And I said, ‘are you going to build it?’ and he said yes and I said ‘why are you doing a bloody study?’ and he got quite grumpy about that.”

Premier Daniel Andrews hasn’t appeared on Mitchell’s 3AW show for almost five years. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Mitchell added that he had broadcast something else which he declined to repeat in case he was sued. He added: “I did broadcast this, when he went up to his father’s farm during the election campaign and his father was dying and he took the bus up there to take film of his dad selling off the farm. I thought it was wrong and I rang him to tell him that. He has told ministers, people I know, that it’s because I went after his wife after the car crash. And that’s just garbage. It didn’t happen. In fact I sent the tape to a number of ministers and they said you didn’t do anything wrong.

“I’m not worth the risk, it’s that simple.”

Mitchell opened up to Tony Jones on his segment, What Makes You Tick?.

He said the last time he shook Andrews’ hand was at the football in 2018.

“He did shake it but he did look the other way — it was a night final and Melbourne won,’’ he said.

“It was at the official lunch and full of people and he squeezed past my table. I put out my hand but there was no conversation. I think he said hello. That doesn’t worry me (that he didn’t look at me).”