Daniel Andrews report card: The good, bad and unclear
The past four years have seen Labor set about changing the state of Victoria — and fast. The Herald Sun’s state political team looks back at some of the major hits and misses of Premier Daniel Andrews and his team.
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Even the Andrews Government’s fiercest critics won’t accuse it of being boring.
The past four years have seen Labor set about changing the state of Victoria — and fast. Roads, level crossings and even multi-billion dollar contracts have been torn up.
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Tunnels are being dug. Scandals have erupted, the police are probing rorts and radical social policies have been pushed through.
The Herald Sun’s state political team looks back at some of the major hits and misses of Premier Daniel Andrews and his team.
LEVEL CROSSINGS
Labor’s signature promise at the last election was to remove 50 level crossings over eight years — including 20 by 2018. It was laughed off by critics in the former Napthine government as pie-in-the-sky, but as the election approaches 29 have hit the dust and an extra 25 will be added to the to-do list.
The sky rail project to remove nine crossings along the Dandenong rail corridor sparked a fierce backlash from locals, but it kept the city’s busiest line running while elevated tracks were built.
While the budget has blown out, grade separations are popular with motorists and public transport passengers alike.
Labor says it is still a popular campaigning tool.
LAW AND ORDER
Crime is an issue that keeps Labor MPs up at night, and it’s not hard to see why.
The Apex gang rampaged through Moomba and committed terrifying carjackings and home invasions.
Teen thugs trashed the Parkville youth prison and broke out of Malmsbury for a crime spree. Islamic State-inspired terrorists have struck three times, pedestrians were killed by drivers mowing them down in Flinders St and Bourke St, and young women such as Masa Vukotic and Eurydice Dixon were murdered.
The government responded with a plan to recruit 3135 new police, and eventually toughened parole, bail and sentencing laws.
Crime stats have improved, but perceptions of safety remain low, leaving Labor exposed at the ballot box.
INJECTING ROOM
Heroin overdoses claimed the lives of 190 Victorians in a year, including 34 in North Richmond.
Coroners, doctors and emergency services workers demanded a safe injecting room, which the government rejected until Andrews flipped last year and announced a two-year trial.
The centre is next to a primary school and has caused major security concerns, prompting the Opposition to vow to scrap it if elected.
Up to 200 drug users are visiting every day and dozens of overdoses have been treated inside, which experts say has saved lives.
METRO TUNNEL
The $11 billion Metro Tunnel is a 9km twin rail line from Kensington to South Yarra that will change the city and is seen as vital in dealing with Melbourne’s rapid growth.
It is expensive but Labor stared down naysayers to charge ahead with the build, and early works have begun. This was made possible by $1.5 billion being put in the government’s first Budget.
Disruption is massive and there are concerns about whether the project can be kept on budget but construction is moving quickly and Labor says the tunnel can be opened in 2025.
MPs say the “cranes in the sky” from projects such as this are also important for voters to see close to the election.
INTEGRITY IN OFFICE
The Andrews Government has been rocked by scandal after scandal. Early on, former Small Business Minister Adem Somyurek was accused of bullying his chief of staff Dimity Paul and was turfed from Cabinet.
Corrections Minister Steve Herbert resigned from Cabinet after having his pet dogs Patch and Ted chauffeured by his taxpayer-funded driver. And Speaker Telmo Languiller and Deputy Speaker Don Nardella were dumped from their important positions after rorting a country residence allowance.
The pair had claimed to live by the sea despite representing outer suburban electorates. And the state’s anti-corruption watchdog is probing allegations of a cash-for-stacks printing scandal involving the office of retiring MP Khalil Eideh.
JOBS GROWTH
Almost 400,000 jobs have been created since Labor was elected.
That’s a lot.
It outranks the growth in any other state, and helps keep pace with massive population increases.
Unemployment is down to 4.5 per cent — the lowest it’s been in more than seven years.
Many jobs have been created in public services as well as through the state’s big infrastructure pipeline that is worth $10 billion a year.
While there has been a pick-up across the country in the past couple of years, Victoria has been a big engine room for growth, fuelled partly by the big-spending Andrews Government.
COST OF LIVING
Just as families were struggling with rising bills, Hazelwood power station closed its doors.
Prices shot up, costing households hundreds of dollars a year, and the government grappled with how to fill the gap left in the energy sector.
Meanwhile, as gas prices rose the government maintained a ban on conventional gas drilling — separate to controversial fracking.
In a bid to reduce the damage to the hip pocket, Labor introduced a $50 cash payment to visit an energy-compare website to get a better power deal, and is promising $1.2 billion for half-price solar panels.
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MANAGING ECONOMY
The Victorian Budget is awash with cash, including about $10 billion in surpluses, and the state’s Triple-A credit rating has been rock-solid. But the property market slowdown is forecast to wipe $2.4 billion from the books over the next four years, sparking concerns the Budget is too reliant on stamp duty receipts and population growth.
Public sector wages ballooned by $1.8 billion last year, with dozens of extra bureaucrats employed on six-figure salaries.
But $9.7 billion was brought in for leasing the Port of Melbourne, $2 billion from selling our slice of Snowy Hydro, and $2.8 billion from privatising the Land Titles Office.
TACKLING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Labor ordered a royal commission into family violence, shining a light on horrific crimes against women and children which laws had failed to comprehensively tackle.
The 13-month commission delivered 227 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the government.
The reforms have been backed by a $2 billion investment to pay for support hubs, crisis accommodation, specialist family violence courts, body-worn cameras for police, public awareness campaigns and counselling services.
Many of the reforms are long-term but the government has set the platform for reducing the scourge.
EAST WEST LINK
Daniel Andrews went to the 2014 election vowing to rip up the contracts for the new East West Link toll road after saying, “the contracts are not worth the paper they’re written on”.
He followed through with the pledge, but the Auditor-General later found that $1.2 billion had been ploughed into a road that would not be built.
Homes acquired for the project were left empty and then overtaken by squatters.
The government then signed up to Transurban’s alternative east-west crossing, the West Gate Tunnel, which will ease congestion but slugs motorists on CityLink more tolls.
Independent infrastructure bodies say Melbourne still needs the tunnel, and the Opposition promises to build it if elected.
But Andrews maintains it’s “a dud project”.
SCHOOL BUILDINGS
Labor has ploughed more than $3.8 billion into building 70 new schools and upgrading 1300 others.
Many new facilities are in Melbourne’s booming outer suburbs, but Victoria’s first high-rise state school also opened in the inner city to cater for the increasing number of families living close to the CBD.
Labor has promised, if re-elected, to open dozens more schools, which will be needed as the state prepares to pack an extra 90,000 students into public classrooms by 2022.
It’s also helped create 5000 construction jobs for Victorians.
Insiders say this has set Labor apart from the previous government that didn’t build any new schools.
FIRE SERVICES
The CFA crisis has been simmering since the government’s first year, but it erupted in 2016 when Andrews buckled to the United Firefighters Union’s demands in a draft workplace agreement.
Emergency Services Minister Jane Garrett and CFA chief Lucinda Nolan resigned in protest, and the CFA board was sacked.
The exodus of senior leaders continued in the MFB when Andrews also backed the union’s EBA wishlist there.
The Premier declared in 2016 that he “ended” the CFA dispute, but it changed the course of that federal election and continues to hurt his government, even after firefighters were given pay rises and new allowances.
Labor’s solution was to dismantle the CFA and restructure fire services, but it couldn’t get laws through state parliament. This week the premier called for the UFU to stop bullying Ms Garrett, and Labor MPs are exasperated the saga continues to distract from its core agenda.
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VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA
This monumental law change wasn’t part of Labor’s plan when elected in 2014, but it snuck through state parliament in late 2017.
It won’t begin until next year, with strict safeguards being created and a stringent regime to limit accessibility to a couple of hundred people a year.
The laws will allow for terminally-ill Victorians of sound mind to request life-ending drugs.
The government says it is about giving choice to people with incurable illnesses. Advocates and opponents have been campaigning alongside state MPs this year, hoping it will win votes
RED SHIRTS SAGA
In late 2015, the Herald Sun revealed that Labor had used taxpayer-funded staff to boost its red shirt-wearing campaign team in 2014. Premier Daniel Andrews denied wrongdoing and said rules had been followed.
But when Ombudsman Deborah Glass was asked to investigate, the government tried to block her path, mounting multiple court challenges. Ms Glass eventually found Labor ripped off taxpayers to the tune of $388,000 when 21 MPs handed over staff to boost the campaign in marginal seats.
The ALP eventually paid the money back. But now the Victoria Police fraud squad is investigating if any of those involved in the scheme should face criminal charges.
RADICAL SOCIAL AGENDA
The government has led some big social policy changes, saying it wants to boost equality.
It has also come under fire for what critics call “social engineering”. One flashpoint has been about its Safe Schools anti-bullying strategy.
That policy was overhauled and ties were cut with founder Roz Ward (below).
Education Minister James Merlino says the program is about stopping bullying of children who are same-sex attracted or gender diverse, but the Liberals say it has drifted from being anti-bullying to promoting “radical gender theory”.
CONCLUSION
The Government has been — at various times and sometimes all at once — energetic, chaotic, state builders and state rorters.
One constant has been the win-at-all-costs leadership of Daniel Andrews, who has been unmoved by scandals and internal ructions as he has pushed through a massive agenda of change.
The successes and failures of this government have had his fingerprints clearly visible.
On November 24, more than 4.1 million people will back him to either continue this for four more years, or vote for change.
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