Steve Price: Why does Victoria’s love affair with Daniel Andrews endure?
After all he’s put Victorians through this year, how can so many still support our scandal-plagued premier, asks Steve Price.
Opinion
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Victoria’s love affair with Premier Daniel Andrews is a mystery to the rest of Australia.
Running into trucking and property billionaire Lindsay Fox a couple of weeks ago for a chat confirmed for me what the Premier’s rusted on supporters already believe – that he’s some sort of Labor messiah
Fox — who had already during the COVID-19 emergency praised the Premier for “having the balls” to make the tough decision — told me he thinks “Daniel can win the next two elections.”
Admittedly the conversation took place before the final report of the Coate inquiry into hotel quarantine dropped, prompting former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos to slam Andrews for putting on “another masterclass in political deflection”.
And Fox and I spoke before it became apparent the inquiry wouldn’t even be able to extract from 70,000 documents the identity of the individual who made the decision to use private security guards on hotel quarantine.
We also talked about the Premier before it was revealed that the redacted phone records of Daniel Andrews would remain just that — a secret.
Incredibly, given the deaths of more than 800 people and the destruction of Victorian’s businesses and the mental health emergency the lockdown caused, you’d think there would be a public baying for the Premier’s head.
It hasn’t happened and that’s what the rest of Australia finds so confusing. I am constantly asked by interstate friends what’s with Dan Andrews and Victorians.
How can Australia’s second biggest State with a capital city the size of Melbourne, continue to support a Government that has clearly failed in its duty to protect their citizens?
It makes no sense to many Victorians let alone anyone living outside Victoria.
Victoria, and Victorian voters, clearly have a love affair with State Labor Governments and if an election was to be held next weekend the Andrew’s administration would be easily voted back in.
A caveat on this should, I think, be that I’m really talking about Victorians who live in Melbourne and most particularly inner-city almond milk latte Melburnians.
Compare this love affair with New South Wales, where former Premier Barry O’Farrell was forced to quit after his memory deserted him appearing before an ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) inquiry.
His crime was to not remember a party donor had sent him a Bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage.
We have to go all the way back to the early days of the Jeff Kennett-led Liberal/National Coalition Government — elected in 1992, removing the lamentable Joan Kirner — to witness a period of dominance by a non-Labor State Government.
Jeff Kennett won two terms and was dumped by Victorians in the shock loss of 1999 when regional Victorians turned on him for ignoring the bush. Even Labor was shocked that September Preliminary final day when Steve Bracks won office.
It seems moderate Labor leaders like Bracks, John Cain before him and then John Brumby did such a good job that Victorians prefer to have them run their State.
The last truly bad Labor Premier was the late Kirner who turned the State into a laughing- stock, with Victorians fleeing what became known as the “rust bucket State”.
But after two terms and seven years of conservative rule it was back to Labor.
So, what is it about Victoria and Victorians that they keep electing anyone but a Liberal?
The quality of Liberal leaders would be an EASY answer but it’s much more complicated than that and having lived between the two biggest States over that past 18 years I’m not sure I completely understand what’s going on here.
The Kennett years saw an aggressive, complicated and confident leader who believed in his crash and crash through agenda so completely that he just got on with it.
After the Kirner disaster Victoria was ready for someone who got on with the job of rebuilding.
Kennett took on the unions, busted up workplace monopolies and built things. He reinvigorated Melbourne with stage shows and sport including the Formula 1 Grand Prix and oversaw the opening of Crown casino.
He was certainly divisive, and I remember having to evacuate him via the backdoor of the old 3AW building in Bank St South Melbourne when the CFMEU decided to picket the radio station during his weekly appearance with Neil Mitchell.
Some bozo from the union had stuck a barbecue fork in his face when the Premier tried to enter through the front door. Kennett’s solution by the way, to not having the regular chat on air, was to ask us to install a remote link into the Premier’s private office.
This did pose the problem of what to do when Premier Kennett worked out how to dial in remotely, demanding to go to air. We solved this by pretending not to be able to hear him.
Contrast that period with the Andrews years. The current Premier has black-listed that radio station and Neil Mitchell in particular. He preferred instead, until the show ended, Triple M’s Hot Breakfast team of Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy. He didn’t get an easy run there at all but FM radio is Andrews’ preference driven, I suspect, by research and demographics — the older AW audience seems to be Andrews’ only vocal non media opponents.
His seemingly untouchable premiership includes the ripping up of the East-West link contract, turning his back on $1.5 billion in Federal funds and blowing hundreds of millions in compensation.
Who survives not building a road that was desperately needed and losing money in the process?
Then came 2020 and Covid. Melbourne went into the toughest lockdowns in Australia as the virus escaped hotel quarantine and was spread through nursing homes, public housing and dozens of suburbs.
Quickly we learnt this happened because of a failure of security and substandard, some say, primitive contact tracing. The popular Premier just kept turning up to a daily news conference confirming more deaths and more cases.
But to call for his head or to criticise his handling of the emergency became a blood sport. Stupid hashtags supporting Dan surfaced and anyone who dared be critical was set upon.
Now out the other side it wouldn’t surprise if his supporters held a let’s thank Dan rally. The next election isn’t due until November 26 in 2022 almost two years away. Premier Andrews this week said he will be on the ballot.
As Lindsay Fox told me, Dan will win that election and the one after if he runs.
Go figure.
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