Andrew Bolt: Dan Andrews’ web of power a concern

One of the sinister things about Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is how organs of state power seem so helpful to him.

One of the sinister things about Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is how organs of state power seem so helpful to him.

Last week the Victorian Electoral Commission announced – just nine days before the election – it was referring Opposition Leader Matthew Guy to the state’s anti-corruption watchdog.

The timing could hardly have been more damaging to the Liberals, and the VEC made very sure voters knew.

VEC’s communications chief Sue Lang even went on 3AW to underline it was Guy the commission thought hadn’t told all he knew about his now dumped chief of staff’s attempt to get a party donor to employ him for $100,000. Guy denies it.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: David Crosling

The timing of the VEC’s announcement was grossly inappropriate, given it was of a mere allegation – not investigation – and bound to derail Guy’s election campaign. The Liberals accuse the VEC of interfering in the election.

Now contrast. Two weeks earlier, that watchdog the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission got the Supreme Court to ban a newspaper from publishing details of its investigation into Andrews.

Voters couldn’t be told about an investigation into how Andrews reportedly gave a friendly union $3.2m of taxpayers’ money for a training course without a tender and against bureaucrats’ advice.

So one government body trumpets a complaint against the Liberal leader; another silences reports of an investigation into alleged corruption by the Labor Premier. Not for the first time I worry about the web of power with Andrews at its centre.

Victoria Police, for instance, enforced Andrews’ six harsh lockdowns of Melbourne with a brutality seen in no other state.

But the George Pell case is the ugliest example. Police advertised for “victims” of the Catholic cardinal before a single complaint. They then charged Pell with 27 complaints of child sex abuse against nine “victims” so far-fetched that all collapsed.

But Victoria’s Appeals Court decided two to one to keep Pell locked up until the High Court unanimously freed him, realising – as I’d pointed out – Pell couldn’t have been where his accuser said at the only time the rape could have occurred.

Andrews, meanwhile, whipped up the get-Pell mob. When former PM Tony Abbott visited Pell, a friend, in jail, the media was tipped off in time to ambush him outside, and Andrews called the visit “shameful”. Even when the High Court cleared Pell, Andrews tweeted to “victims”: “I believe you.”

Cut out this cancer.