Andrew Bolt: Outgoing premier Daniel Andrews bows out under the impression he’s a winner

So Daniel Andrews gets away with it. He leaves as a winner, or so he thinks, despite being by almost every measure one of the worst political leaders in our lifetime.

So Daniel Andrews gets away with it. The Victoria Premier quits after nine years and three elections wins - quits on his own terms, despite being by almost every measure one of the most disastrous political leaders in our lifetime.

He leaves as a winner, or so he thinks, and his critics can get stuffed.

In his own eyes, he’s the man who stared them all down. As he said in his goodbye, he’s the man the media “never really understood”- someone “always working hard to do what’s right, not simply to do what’s popular”.

There’s a joke right there. This is a man who polled public opinion ferociously during the pandemic, switching from hard lockdowns to she’ll-be-right as soon as the public mood shifted from terrified to let-us-out.

This is a man whose government last year, certainly in the first half, spent more on advertising than any other state.

That eye for massaging the message helped him to quit today with his party way ahead of the hapless, hopeless Liberals.

So that’s success, right? A winner.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announces his resignation at Parliament House in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Except history will not be kind to him, and, as a former senior Labor colleague of Andrews told me, now that he’s gone he loses control of how that history will be written.

Tongues in the government which he ruled with an iron fist, forcing out rivals, will be loosened.

That fact is that Andrews is leaving a disastrous legacy. I tipped on election night last year that he’d be gone before the next because the reckoning for his blunders will soon come.

The statistics don’t lie. Andrews in fact rates as one of the very worst premiers, judged by what he’s done for his state, and not by what he’s won for Labor.

Take the state’s debt. It’s massive. Bigger than NSW and Queensland combined, with ratings agency Moody’s warning the way it’s going it will double.

Or take the electricity system that this global warming extremist has helped to devastate, leaving Victoria shorter of power than any other state, with the Australian Energy Market Operator warning of blackouts perhaps even this summer.

So many of his big projects have blown their budget - the Metro tunnel by more than $2bn. His promised suburban rail loop is now estimated to cost not the $50 billion Andrews claimed but $125bn.

Catherine Andrews and kids watch as her husband Daniel Andrews announces his retirement at Parliament House in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire

But details like money never seemed to bother this man. This is the premier who started his authoritarian reign by tearing up the key East West Link road project that the Liberal government had ordered, flushing more than $1bn of taxpayers’ money down the toilet.

He’s now ended with the same stupid trick, cancelling a Commonwealth Games he could never afford, forcing him to spend another $380m in compensation.

And in between, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Andrews imposed the harshest and longest lockdowns of any state, again and again, like a madman convinced he could eradicate even this virus, no matter the cost to the men, women and especially children he was locking down so often.

But even then, Andrews again proved he was the most incompetent leader of any state, despite his impregnable front of utter conviction - the conviction that some people confuse with leadership, even as they’re being led over a cliff or into a final bunker.

More facts: under Andrews, Victoria not only had the worst lockdowns of any state, yet also the most breakouts from his ramshackle quarantine hotels, and the most deaths.

Outgoing Daniel Andrews is under the impression he’s exiting Parliament as a winner despite a string of failed projects to his name. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Oh, don’t worry that I’m being mean to a man who leaves after giving everything to serving his state. He said it himself at his press conference, he doesn’t care what critics think, which I assume includes critics like the state’s corruption watchdog and the Ombudsman, who accused Labor under Andrews of stealing nearly $400,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay Labor campaigners.

So Andrews goes out a winner, under his definition, if not mine.

He’ll probably bob up working for some business outfit, maybe even one from China - the country he assiduously courted, signing up to its notorious Belt and Road Initiative, alone of any government here.

Andrews says only that he’s off to play more golf.

So let some other premier - most likely Jacinta Allan, also from the Labor Left - figure out how to pay the debts Andrews left behind, finish the mad projects he dreamed up, fix the electricity system he’s ruined.

And let generations of Victorians now pay for the follies of the Andrews regime.