Backroom Baz: Dan gets a beer, a Twitter storm brews and time doesn’t heal Jon Faine’s wounds

He famously told us to get on the beers, now Premier Daniel Andrews can drink his own brew. Backroom Baz with all the Spring St scuttlebutt.

Getting on the beers with Dan Anbrew. Picture: Kiel Egging

Just when you thought the “get on the beers” references had run their course.

Public Brewing Co have taken the joke to ad nauseam with a whole beer named after the premier.

Dubbed “Dan Anbrews” the drop is described as a water sun beer. Good luck finding out anything else about it because the product description is just a series of references to his press conferences!

Although the man himself is more partial to the top shelf, Baz predicts this will be a common and controversial Christmas gift among Spring St staffers.

Head brewer Gab Porto and operations manager Andrew Croucher at The Public Brewery, which rebranded a beer to honour Daniel Andrews. Picture: Kiel Egging

VACCINE TWITTER BURN

Anyone in politics knows the importance of nailing the picture opp. Labor thought they’d done just that earlier this month, when Richard Marles unveiled infectious diseases expert Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah as the party’s candidate for Higgins outside Prahran Town Hall.

She politely batted away questions about her previous controversial comments on the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, including that it had “failed in terms of its efficacy”, and later altered her position to say opting for the jab was important in areas of high transmission.

The photo opportunity that sparked a Twitter storm.

But once the pictures were shared on Twitter, things took a turn when they were spotted by Dr Catherine Orr, who set up a vaccine clinic inside the Town Hall that had delivered 20,000 AstraZeneca jabs.

She blasted Ananda-Rajah, saying she had been “trashing” AstraZeneca and was a “disgrace” who Labor “should never have accepted” as a candidate. Baz rushed for the popcorn as Orr continued to fire away, making it clear it was no partisan matter either.

But at that point, Ananda-Rajah had already blocked Orr, which was lucky or she would otherwise have needed treatment for a Twitter burn.

TIME DOESN’T HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Time heals most wounds, but it looks like former ABC presenter Jon Faine is still smarting about the messy collapse of his scoop with Premier Daniel Andrews before his return to work.

In June, Faine had lined up an exclusive comeback interview but the story was spiked at the last minute by both The Age and the ABC.

Age editor Gay Alcorn didn’t want the premier’s office to dictate which journalist did the interview, leading to a stalemate, while the ABC paid for the piece but later declined to run it.

Faine’s paid work for the Andrews government on a health campaign has been cited as a factor.

THREAD: Interrupt your grim doom scrolling to enjoy this Xmas tale of epic career failure at my expense… about the most *savage editing* of anything I’ve ever done.

(And writers, please let me know yours).

Leonardo DiCaprio is involved, but it’s not specifically his fault. pic.twitter.com/cNZfbKVNeC

— Dan Ziffer (@danziffer) August 10, 2021

We’d all moved on until this week another ABC journo, Dan Ziffer, treated his locked-down Twitter followers to an entertaining story about writing a 1800-word piece only to have it run as a two-sentence picture yarn.

Out of the ether emerged Faine, clearly still upset about his own yarn never seeing the light of day.

“Ha! How about landing “the” one-on-one with Dan Andrews as he is about to return to work, spend two days writing it and then … well … I still don’t understand,” he wrote in reply.

RAE OF SUNSHINE FOR HAWKE

It’s full steam ahead for Sam Rae in his quest to become the first MP for the new federal seat of Hawke.

He farewelled the PwC partnership on Friday, nearly two years after swapping his role as Labor’s Victorian secretary for a high-flying gig at the big four firm.

Sam Rae is trying to become the new federal member for Hawke.

PwC managing partner Peter Konidaris praised his “wonderful contribution” in a note to colleagues, saying Rae had shown “excellent thought leadership” in his work as a consultant on bushfire management, as well as balancing the environmental and economic issues confronting the forestry industry.

Baz reckons that’s a vote of confidence, given there would hardly be two thornier issues in Victorian politics, and Konidaris agreed, saying he thought Rae would do “an outstanding job” as an MP.

Now he just has to hope the Supreme Court doesn’t force the party back to square one on his preselection, which has been at the centre of a fierce factional fight.

HECKLER OF A DIFFERENT COLOUR

While hecklers have recently become more frequent at press conferences, Ros Spence was this week upstaged by someone a bit closer to home.

Speaking via Zoom for a presentation organised by Youth Affairs Council Victoria, the minister kept her cool while a feline friend hopped on to the back of her chair.

Hopefully it isn’t a bad omen!

The Zom intruder and Ros Spence.

GUESS WHO

Which Spring St journo was left red-faced after asking the exact same question – word for word – directly after a colleague at a recent Covid presser?