Patrick Carlyon: Why Dan can’t just play on
If Daniel Andrews was heading a company, corporate investigators would swarm. If he was an AFL coach, he would have been tossed out. But he won’t be dropped, even though his being “Razor Rayed” seems appropriate to many of the Victorians who have been wantonly misled, writes Patrick Carlyon.
Patrick Carlyon
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Some people love “Razor Ray” Chamberlain and some people hate him.
The AFL umpire’s animated presence on the field prompts instinctive reactions. When Razor Ray decides the rules have been broken, he relishes doing so.
Things seemed good for Razor Ray. Premier Daniel Andrews had replaced him as the most polarising person in Melbourne. Razor Ray seemed set for another finals series.
Then, he fell out of form. He couldn’t bounce the ball properly, a common issue for umpires in long careers. Razor Ray was dropped and will sit out next week’s AFL Grand Final.
Umpiring is not a personality contest. Nor is politics. But the rituals of elite sport equally apply to both. These are brutal pastimes.
Participants must shoulder scrutiny that both exposes and seeks to exploit their perceived weaknesses.
Yet the age-old performance measures have dimmed in politics. Once, when expectations went unmet, politicians walked away. Reputation dented, they sought dignity in their exits.
This is no longer the case. The reckoning itself has been reckoned away. Perceptions no longer shame dubious achievers from their perches as political leaders.
We can see this in NSW, where Premier Gladys Berejiklian was revealed to have been intimate with a disgraced former colleague, Daryl Maguire.
As a friend or relative, Berejiklian would warrant some understanding and care. But she leads the state. Her judgments, and perceptions of them, are critical to her governance.
In Victoria, we have Andrews, a dedicated servant since the pandemic’s rise. He, too, has made poor judgments.
Frustrations mount at the apparent arbitrariness of 5km radiuses and staggered returns to school. His strident disregard for Victoria’s retail Armageddon conflicts with his own government’s health advice to business groups.
That Andrews has erred is inevitable. Anyone would in the circumstances. But his unwillingness to accept those failings have, like a dag on a sheep, smeared the longer journey.
Accepted rules of engagement used to apply to political scandals.
What is now known as the pub test would be applied. As Razor Ray once told a miffed player: “I didn’t write the book, I just read it.”
Andrews, a voracious reader, does not subscribe to this rule book, which demanded that then NSW premier Barry O’Farrell resign in 2014. O’Farrell had forgotten he had received a $3000 bottle of wine. In resigning, he said “as someone who believes in accountability, in responsibility, I accept the consequences of my action.”
O’Farrell’s course made sense at the time. He had failed to convince the people that their perceptions were wrong.
Andrews shows little of O’Farrell’s purported care for accountability or responsibility. His evidence to the inquiry into hotel quarantine has been questioned by his former health minister Jenny Mikakos. His most senior official, Chris Eccles, has resigned.
Mikakos and Eccles being benched, said Andrews, was “appropriate”. Yet their boss, our state’s chief umpire, remains.
There are calls for Andrews to give more inquiry evidence after, on his sole attempt, he projected an absence of professional curiosity.
If Andrews didn’t oversee the use of private security in hotel quarantine, he ought to have. He has sounded like an elite football coach who sends too many players onto the field, then fingers his underlings for the oversight.
Andrews knew about the use of private security within an hour of a phone call between Eccles and former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton on March 27. He announced the plan to the world.
Yet he doesn’t know how or why the harebrained scheme came to be?
There is no satisfying answer for any of this. Andrews’ line has been disingenuous at best, as though he fears that facts are not his friend. Yet ignorance or obfuscation are equally as culpable in a leader whose negligence or muddle-headedness clobbered a state.
Andrews’ colleagues have not benched him. They seem cowed by his omnipotence. A “no confidence” motion in parliament this week amounted to an Opposition stunt.
Andrews says he doesn’t run from “difficult things”. But he has so far short-circuited the essential exploration of his policy failings.
If Andrews was heading a company, corporate investigators would swarm. If he was an AFL coach, he would have been tossed out, complete with the obligatory press conference in which he expresses regret for his performance.
Andrews won’t be dropped, even though his being “Razor Rayed” seems appropriate to many of the Victorians who have been wantonly misled.
Andrews failed to perform when it mattered most, and 816 people have died. Surely that’s a bigger scandal than a misplaced free kick or bottle of wine.
Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist