Why Cabinet leaks signal a Dan-free future is looming
Hardly a day goes by right now where someone isn’t ringing with information from inside Daniel Andrews’ Cabinet. After five years of being subjected to unprecedented central control from the Premier, public servants and MPs seem to be daring to dream of a Dan-free future, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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Daniel Andrews is now in his sixth year in office and for the first five of them, his government was largely leak-free.
Sure, there was the time he tried to get his Cabinet to hand over their mobile phones so they could be checked to see with whom they had been talking. That leaked within hours of him proposing it. Oh and the fire services, of course. They’ve been an endless source of indiscretions.
But by and large, since 2014 getting unauthorised information from public servants and Cabinet ministers has been harder than getting blood from a stone. Not anymore. Now, hardly a day goes by where someone isn’t ringing in with information from inside Cabinet, the Caucus or the four corners of the state’s bureaucracy.
I’m sure I’m not the only one. Some of the things journalists have been told have already made it into print. Some will make it into print if we succeed in standing it up. Some will stay hearsay. Why should this be so?
The new chattiness is explained in part by the sheer scale of the consequences that have followed from the hotel quarantine screw-up. I mean, let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to shift the blame to others for dozens of deaths and the destruction of the national economy?
No doubt some of this new candour can also be explained by everyone being at home all the time — it’s much easier to have private conversations and copy documents when you’re not in the office.
But as one minister mused this week, some of the breakdown in discipline must be coming from the fact that after that five years of being subjected to unprecedented central control from the Premier and his Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, public servants and MPs are daring to dream of a Dan-free future.
In an atmosphere like this, people tend to over-analyse everything as happened this week over two pieces which appeared in the media.
The first was the Daily Mail’s long and glowing profile of Jacinta Allan, which said that in the Transport Minister, “the Labor caucus has a potential replacement should Chairman Dan prove to be even more of a political liability”.
Within hours I had been sent it by three Labor MPs and a party powerbroker. What did it all mean? Who had caused it to be written? Was Allan signalling she was ready?
And what about the line from Lisa Chesters that “Daniel Andrews is the current Premier” of the state. What did that mean? Lisa who? Sorry, Lisa Chesters, federal MP for Bendigo and close factional ally of the Socialist Left Senator Kim Carr. Was the quote to be taken as a subtle sign the Carr Left are off the Premier and on the Transport Minister?
What did it mean for Allan’s relationship with the Premier. The assumption of many in Spring Street is that when he goes he wants her to replace him. Could it be that assumption is false? The article revived speculation that perhaps Allan isn’t the chosen one. But if not her, then who? Look at the warm way Dan introduces his deputy James Merlino at press conferences, said one senior Liberal MP. We shouldn’t rule him out.
The chatter only intensified later when the Mail reported that after initially promising them a quote from Allan to mark the 30th anniversary of Joan Kirner becoming premier, they had instead been directed by the Premier’s office to the Minister for Women, Gabrielle Williams.
Kirner, whose picture overlooks Labor’s caucus room, had been much on the mind of many in the Labor caucus in recent months as Victoria’s budget has crashed into territory not seen since she took over from John Cain in 1990.
These days the Labor Party likes to remember her as a reforming education minister and later the pioneering female leader, while passing over the Kirner government in silence — which is understandable, I suppose, as the early 1990s was not a happy time for the ALP.
In popular memory Cain/Kirner is Victorian shorthand for a political disaster. In some ways this does a disservice to her memory. Kirner came to office in the middle of a deep recession with the state’s finances in a diabolical state.
It would have been easy to simply pander to Labor’s voters and put off the nasty decisions until another day.
Instead, she and her treasurers, Tom Roper and later Tony Sheehan, had a stab at governing. Government charges were raised. To raise money poker machines were introduced and a casino planned — both anathemas to sections of the ALP.
And unlike Daniel Andrews and Tim Pallas, Kirner and her treasurers did not hand out 8 per cent pay rises to the state’s public servants as this government has done in the middle of the greatest shock to the state’s economy and budget since the Great Depression. That pay deal, struck in the middle of a pandemic, screams louder than bombs that Dan and Tim have no intention of hanging around to clean up the mess they have made.
The week’s other over-analysed piece of journalism appeared in the Financial Review and speculated there is a move to replace Michael O’Brien as Liberal leader before the next election.
Until recently the general view was that whatever concerns one might have about aspects of his performance, if O’Brien wanted the job he was welcome to it.
Where do you begin listing his problems? The party administration is a mess, the branches are riven with factional infighting, the party room has more dead wood than the bottom of Lake Eildon and there’s going to be a redistribution that nobody thinks is going to help the Liberal Party. Which isn’t to say there hasn’t been a lot of criticism of O’Brien for what is seen as a softly-softly approach to attacking the government during the crisis. There has, but in my opinion it has mostly come from the party outside parliament, Canberra and the business community who want to see more aggression.
You can make an intellectual case for the way O’Brien has handled the crisis and a case for more aggression just as easily. There are no easy answers.
The public mood can shift quickly. Going gently early on made sense when it looked as though the government was handling the crisis well. Less so now when things are going badly, far more badly than in the rest of the country.
O’Brien’s critics should keep in mind that while you can make the switch at any time from bipartisan supporter of the government in time of national crisis to feral attack dog, you can’t easily switch back if the public mood shifts. And in this situation the one thing you can be sure of is the mood is going to shift.
It is also true that the state Opposition leader was never going to get much airtime in the middle of a global pandemic.
The danger to O’Brien will come if his colleagues decide that it doesn’t matter how much exposure he gets, the public just isn’t going to buy him.
James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist