‘Frightening’: Emboldened by his election win, Andrews is shaping Victoria in his own image
Dan Andrews is becoming more radical, marching for Gay Pride and celebrating Chinese culture but denying us an Australia Day parade.
Opinion
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It has been 11 weeks since the Andrews Labor government was re-elected to run Victoria for the next four years.
Around 1.4 million Victorians ticked Labor at the ballot box compared with just under 1.1 million for the Liberals and another 172,000 for the Nationals.
The Victorian Greens pulled in 11.5 per cent or a tick over 416,000 votes. With those numbers Victoria cemented its place as the most progressive – some say most radical – state in Australia.
With a likely win by Labor in the March state election in NSW that will leave only Tasmania as a non-Labor government, state or federal.
Australia - especially Victoria - has lurched to the left with climate change policies and rivers of state and federal government grants and handouts, plus debt-funded major projects securing Labor/Green votes.
Anywhere I visit outside Victoria one of the first questions I’m asked is: “Why did Victorians return a Labor Government that locked them down longer than most of the rest of the world during Covid?”
A government that treated the population with arrogant disdain.
The simple answer is clearly that the Liberal/National alternative was seen as being incapable of taking over.
It seems the better the devil you know syndrome took over and people thought, “well, it can’t be any worse than the Covid nightmare, let’s give them another shot”.
I think Victorians are about to find out what a dreadful mistake that was.
The Andrews government is in full flight, starting a third term with an arrogant know-all as Premier.
It is a frightening thing to witness.
If you thought Andrews was arrogant before winning 11 weeks ago, watch him now.
Victoria is about to witness a full-scale blitz on any institution that doesn’t agree with the left way of thinking and Labor will continue its radical changes to our way of life.
If you think I am kidding just look at last weekend. Premier Dan Andrews along with his wife Catherine marched their way through St Kilda in the Gay Pride event.
The Premier then turned up to celebrate Chinese New Year in the suburbs.
Both events are admirable celebrations of ethnic heritage and in the case of Gay Pride the celebration of hard-won rights and recognition.
Nothing wrong with the physical support offered up by the Premier but it’s what he cancelled in the weeks prior that matter.
Melbourne was on January 26 denied its traditional Australia Day parade that once featured and highlighted our capital city’s cherished ethnic mix.
Greek and Italian communities and migrants and refugees from South-East Asia dressed in traditional costume and took to St Kilda Rd to proudly show how they had retained their homeland traditions.
The parade — like everything else during Covid — was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.
It won’t return because Dan Andrews and his government and a Green-leaning Melbourne City Council don’t want to get in the way of radical anti-Australia Day marches led by ex-Green Lidia Thorpe.
So instead of youngsters dressed in Greek costume dancing through the CBD we had Thorpe brandishing a battle stick, declaring we are at war and claiming “they” are killing our babies.
This event took place outside state parliament in Spring St within earshot of the Premier’s office. The “they” in that rant from Thorpe is you and me.
Apparently, this is what Victorians voted for back in November, an unhinged radical mob declaring war, backed by a Premier who cancelled a parade you would have thought his ethnic sympathies might lie with.
If you think that’s the worst of it, you haven’t even seen the beginning.
Victorian schools we are told will have lessons this year on the Indigenous Voice From the Heart. Students will need to learn the words and be able to recite them.
Victoria is already a long way down the road toward a treaty with Victorian Indigenous groups with none of us any the wiser what that might mean in practice.
Lidia Thorpe wants non-Indigenous Australians to pay a tax on your wages of one per cent annually - a fee for having the house you paid for on her ancestors’ land.
Victoria will most likely get a female Indigenous leader as our next Governor when the current term of Linda Deseau expires mid-year.
Social policy will, inevitably in Victoria, turn to allowing for the sale and use of marijuana and dumping possession as a criminal offence.
Marijuana shops will spring up all over the joint.
The second heroin injecting facility that mysteriously disappeared off the radar during the election campaign will be back. After all, as taxpayers we paid $40 million for a Flinders St building to house it - that sits vacant.
Maybe one day we might even get to see that famous report from former Police Commissioner Ken Lay.
It’s instructive to go back to the day after that historic win last November.
This is what your Premier said: “My politics, our politics, it’s not about us, and it’s not about the win just for its own sake, it’s about winning, so you have the opportunity and obligation to get on and do the work.”
Interpret that anyway you want, but my take is Premier Andrews knows he has four more years to shape Victoria in his own image.
Get set Victorians for a wild ride and remember you voted for this.
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