Shannon Deery: How Daniel Andrews slipped back into control after return from leave

The Premier looked to prove a point upon his return — and his political muscle was on display from day one back in the job.

Premier Daniel Andrews during his return to work last week. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Crosling

It should be seen as no coincidence that Australia finally got its plan out of Covid at the end of Daniel Andrews’ first week back at work.

Well, it’s a plan for a plan with the much-needed detail still to come, but it’s more than we’ve had until this point. A welcome development.

If Andrews is still carrying the aches and scars from his horror back injury almost exactly four months ago this week, you wouldn’t know it.

Unfounded concerns raised in some quarters about the potential return of a part-time Premier certainly haven’t materialised.

On the contrary, he’s back with a renewed vigour and looking to prove a point.

His political muscle was on display from his first day back in the job in a not unusually combative press conference.

By week’s end he’d successfully arm-wrestled Prime Minister Scott Morrison into unveiling his Covid exit strategy.

Sources close to the Premier say something changed in his Covid outlook while he was away.

In his four months at home he came to the realisation that the idea of ongoing lockdowns was no longer sustainable, and the social licence for ongoing restrictions had disappeared.

Despite being his weapon of choice to combat Covid-19 since March last year, he knew public patience had run out.

If there was any doubt about that, polling conducted during the fourth lockdown and released the week before his return, showed support for his government falling.

Worryingly for Andrews, that support was falling fast in the west, Labor’s traditional heartland.

It would have cemented the view that a new path forward was needed.

Many will say too little, too late.

Since Victoria’s first lockdown, anti-lockdown sentiment has fluctuated.

So of course public frustration would have come as no surprise to Andrews.

But sources say it wasn’t until he was forced to take a back seat and watch the state’s fourth lockdown unfold, rather than orchestrate it, that he realised the urgent need for this new approach.

By his second day back, Andrews was calling for a 50 per cent reduction in the number of people allowed to fly into Australia, regardless of their citizenship status or where they were coming from.

A deserted Melbourne during its fourth lockdown. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

It took many by surprise.

The move would slash the risk of outbreaks from quarantine, and give Australia time to bolster its defences by way of critical mass vaccination, he argued.

By the end of the week he’d upped the ante on that proposal, saying Victoria wasn’t just calling for it, it was demanding it.

“Yes there’d be inconvenience in less people being able to return home, of course there would be, and a lot of that would be heartbreaking,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be forever, it would be until we got a critical mass of Victorians and Australians through the Commonwealth government’s vaccine program.

“Compare a lockdown of a whole city or state, and the pain of that, versus halving or reducing by 75 per cent or 80 per cent, whatever the number is, the number of people who are coming back through hotel quarantine. In my judgment, there’s no comparison.”

By his fourth day back, the Premier had his own four point plan to drag Victoria, and Australia, out of the pandemic.

With more than half of the country under lockdown, and Australia at the back of the queue for vaccines, Andrews was to table the plan at Friday’s national cabinet meeting.

Melbourne CBD is recovering after lockdown. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Crosling

While Morrison had reportedly been working on his own plan, he’d been backed into a corner and knew he could either get on board or resist and delay. Government sources believe that if James Merlino had still been warming the Premier’s seat last week, we still may not have a plan.

However, Andrews brought an extra level of gravitas to the table.

Amid growing tensions between states and the Commonwealth over younger Australians’ receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, Morrison had spent days going head to head with Labor premiers.

But he wouldn’t have fared so well against Andrews, who returned to the job with a level of public sympathy and was the only Labor premier not fighting an outbreak.

It’s noteworthy too that his plan for a dedicated quarantine centre was praised by the feds as thoroughly detailed and imminently sensible, giving his own four-point plan extra force.

Andrews has returned to the job vowing to take Labor to the next election and beyond.

Carving a path out of the pandemic could yet be his legacy.

That’s quite the turnaround for the man who presided over more lockdowns than any other premier, and whose government was behind failures that led to 800 deaths.

But remarkable political turnarounds is what Andrews has come to be known for.

As one senior opposition MP remarked recently, “he’s got the Midas touch, he can truly turn the worst of situations into political gold”.

— Shannon Deery is Herald Sun state politics editor