Andrew Bolt: Why it’s time for Daniel Andrews to step off

Three controversies from his past have re-emerged to confirm Daniel Andrews is the most secretive premier in the country.

Daniel Andrews has once again refused to answer journalists’ questions. Picture: Luis Ascui

It’s no surprise many people don’t believe Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews cracked his spine and fractured six ribs just by slipping down steps at a Sorrento holiday home.

They’ll believe it even less now they’ve seen those steps Andrews claims forced him off work for three months last year.

They’re just two broad planks from the veranda to the ground, but the reason many voters will think the steps are innocent is not merely because they’re so low to the ground.

Just check Andrews’ sneer on Sunday when asked about the Herald Sun’s picture of them: “Are you going to interview the stairs next?”

Bad answer, because I wouldn’t be alone in thinking the steps – not “stairs” – are more likely than Andrews to give a straight answer.

Andrews is having a nightmare start to his campaign in this month’s Victorian election because three controversies from his past have re-emerged to confirm he’s the most secretive premier in the country, not to be trusted.

The steps are the latest, and catnip to the conspiracy minded, not least because Andrews and his staff have refused to say exactly what happened on that day, and where.

Daniel Andrews was virtually unseen for some 100 days after his injury.

Andrews was virtually unseen for some 100 days after his injury until releasing a video on Instagram before his return to work.

In it, he said he’d slipped on the wet steps and become “airborne”, landing so heavily that he could not move.

It says something damning about Andrews’ reputation that so many people didn’t believe him. The rumour mill went wild: Andrews had actually been drunk. He’d fallen down the stairs of a tycoon’s house nearby. He’d been attacked.

After three months, Liberal frontbencher Louise Staley even issued a press release demanding answers “if there is no cover-up”.

But on Sunday, Andrews refused to answer journalists’ questions about how he’d injured himself. It’s his standard response to any controversy, and I suspect voters are waking up to it.

Last week came another Herald Sun story that brought out the worst of the Premier.

Ryan Meuleman complained he’d been let down by Andrews and his wife when hit by their car 10 years ago, again on the Mornington Peninsula, when he was just 15, leaving him with a punctured lung and broken ribs.

Ryan Meuleman says he was let down by Dan Andrews and his wife when hit by their car 10 years ago.

Andrews, speaking five years after that accident, claimed it was Meuleman who’d hit them, “absolutely T-boned” their car, which he said wasn’t speeding.

But Meuleman now says it was, and Andrews and his wife did little to help him other than call an ambulance. A witness has since confirmed she comforted the injured teenager, but could not remember Andrews or his wife doing the same.

Again, I don’t know the truth. But I do recognise the Andrews style that scares me.

Police did not breathalyse Andrews’ wife, the alleged driver, as is standard after an accident. They never took Meuleman’s statement and refused to release those of Andrews and his wife to the media.

Since then we’ve seen how close police are to Andrews. Two examples stand out: Police savagely enforcing Andrews’ pandemic lockdown, even firing rubber bullets, and Andrews and police falsely smearing the innocent Cardinal George Pell, a conservative, as a paedophile.

But, again, check Andrews’ reaction last week to Meuleman’s claims – refusing 17 times to answer journalists’ questions.

There are many reasons for hoping Daniel Andrews is beaten on November 26. Picture: David Crosling

To underline the Andrews style, media reports on Friday said the state’s anti-corruption watchdog, IBAC, interviewed Andrews in its fourth investigation into alleged corruption in his government.

This time he’d been quizzed over his dodgy decision just before the last state election to grant the Health Workers Union $3.2m for a training scheme, without tender and against bureaucrats’ advice.

But on Sunday we again got Andrews’ talk-to-the-hand. He said he was innocent but refused to answer journalists’ questions, saying he’d wait until IBAC finalised its report.

We’ve heard that before. Andrews had likewise refused to comment on an IBAC draft report on how Labor MPs stole nearly $400,000 from taxpayers to fund Labor campaign workers.

There are many reasons to hope Andrews is beaten on November 26. He’s given Victoria a debt that dwarfs those of other states. His brutal lockdowns were the world’s longest, yet left Victoria with Australia’s highest death rate. The Auditor-General says his planned Suburban Rail Loop is a money pit that will blow out from $50bn to a crippling $125bn. His hospitals are not coping.

But it’s Daniel Andrews’ secrecy and hunger for power that’s the real threat to a healthy democracy, and why he must go.