Playing the long game

MOST Victorians don't know who Daniel Andrews is. Members of a recent focus group struggled to even name the state opposition leader. After some prompting, he was dismissed as "the guy who looks like an accountant and hunches".

Not exactly a flattering characterisation, but such is the lot of a first-term opposition leader. Voters are distracted, uninterested, cynical, switched off — particularly when it comes to state politics.

State Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews has been dubbed 'the invisible man' but says he has a strategy to win over the Victorian public - playing the long game.Credit: Justin McManus

One Victorian federal Labor MP put it like this: "The thing about being an opposition leader, particularly in the first year or two after a state election, is that no one . . . gives a shit. It is particularly the case when you've got a federal soap opera going on that is the minority government of which I am so proud to be a member of."

It's a tough gig. The hours are long, the demands constant, the odds of winning slim. Maintaining party unity is hard enough, let alone eventually winning public trust and mapping out a credible policy agenda.

Andrews could be just the man for the job. He is earnest, hardworking, dedicated, a family man. The hope is that voters will gradually warm to him, despite his serious (some would say grim) demeanour and relatively low public profile.

It's called the "osmosis" approach to politics. The idea is to build lasting trust over time with hard work, unity and credibility.

As far as Andrews is concerned, 19 months into a four-year electoral cycle, he can do without the razzle dazzle.

"I'll leave being famous to others," he tells The Age. "What I'm interested in is doing the hard work. That's where true support comes from. You can be well known and not particularly strongly supported. I'm interested in winning the trust and support of Victorians. That doesn't happen overnight. It's a long road."

If Ted Baillieu has adopted a "go slow" approach to government, Andrews is playing a similarly long game. It is a four-step strategy, loosely based around Victoria's four-year fixed electoral cycle.

First, present a united front, avoid the infighting that so often derails first-term oppositions, and turn the blowtorch on the government. Second, (and this is where Labor is now), engage in grassroots, "beneath the radar", town-hall-style politics and conduct a series of "listening tours" in regional areas. Third, transition into a policy phase by offering the public an alternative vision highlighting the government's perceived failings. Finally, present a clear, fully costed, alternative policy agenda that is consistent with Labor's traditional values.

But there is also a sense Andrews will need to jettison the baggage from the Brumby years. This is where the concept of "ultra-local" politics comes in. As the federal government encroaches on the traditional domain of the states, Andrews' idea is to localise state politics by concentrating on parks, schools, local shops and playing fields.

"Macro issues [such as budget management and jobs] are very important but I get a sense people are very focused on their local community and want to see government do more on its own . . . to recognise those considerations are very important in people's lives," he says.

No doubt, there is a vacuum in Victorian politics. The question is whether Andrews is merely keeping the chair warm, or whether he will effectively fill that gap. Can the party led by Andrews win in 2014?

Perhaps his background gives a clue to his tenacity. Daniel Michael Andrews, 40, was born in Williamstown but when he was still young his family moved to Glenroy. His dad ran a large mixed business that was badly damaged after the supermarket next door blew up in mysterious circumstances.

"I can remember, like a scene from Baghdad, this flattened place next door to his shop," he says.

The family was only partially insured. Rather than file for bankruptcy, his father rebuilt the business and later sold it at a loss.

The Andrews family then moved to Wangaratta, where his dad took a job driving a truck for Don Smallgoods, making deliveries to the butchers, supermarkets and delis. His father would later turn the business into a successful franchise, which he sold before becoming a beef farmer.

Reflecting on this, he describes it as "a strange thing" that a family of small business people had such an awareness of "the power of government to support those who perhaps do it tough".

His politics largely comes from his mum, Jan. "All my mother's side are Irish Catholic spud farmers — a keen sense for the underprivileged, fairness, opportunity, equity . . . flows pretty strongly through and that is something given to me."

His work ethic and sense of duty, he suggests, come from his father, Bob, who was devoted to the family.

"He is a very passionate and very determined person who has spent his entire working life working extraordinarily long hours, and has the broken knees and the bad back and looks 20 years older than he is because he sacrificed everything for his kids."

Aside from stints driving a truck for his dad, Andrews has spent his working life with the Labor Party. He started with federal MP Alan Griffin as an electorate officer in the late 1990s while finishing his arts degree at Monash, where he majored in politics and classics.

He moved to Labor headquarters, running the ultimately successful marginal-seats campaign against Jeff Kennett during the 1999 election, before being elected to the seat of Mulgrave in 2002.

The rest, as they say, is history. Andrews served in a variety of roles in the Bracks and Brumby governments, including the gaming and health portfolios before being asked to lead the party following the devastating 2010 election defeat.

"There is nothing easy about that job," he says. "If you are a person who is of the Labor Party and you are called upon to serve in that role, then I think you have to step up and that's exactly what I did."

Andrews, according to one colleague, was born wearing a suit. The word "serious" keeps cropping up. Andrews himself uses it frequently.

"We take our role very seriously," he says. "Some people would characterise me as a serious person. This is a serious business. This is a serious business because who governs this state matters to an awful lot of people, particularly those who do it tough. That's why we've got a serious plan, it's based on discipline and hard work and it's not easy."

It's easy to forget that Andrews is only 40. He has three young kids and describes himself a "golf tragic". He is also an avid reader of political biography and is currently halfway through a biography of golfer Ben Hogan, as well as having almost finished the fourth volume of Robert Caro's epic biography of American president Lyndon Johnson.

But his main hobby is his kids. He says even picking them up from school is a "rare treat" (for him, more so than the kids).

Former treasurer John Lenders, himself one of the more earnest personalities in Victorian politics, says Andrews does have a sense of humour, but is focused and determined and "just puts his head down and gets on with it".

"Government is something he intuitively gets," Lenders says. "That's an unusual in someone of Daniel's age to have that broad level of experience across the board."

Griffin, Andrews' former boss and the author of Labor's frank review of the 2010 election loss, describes Andrews as a "good bloke and a smart bloke".

But he says the task of winning in 2014 will be difficult, given there hasn't been a one-term government in Victoria since John Cain snr was ousted in 1955 as a casualty of the great Labor split.

Despite the huge challenges, Griffin says he believes Andrews can win, pointing to a looming redistribution of electoral boundaries later this year that is likely to favour Labor, and the poor performance of the Baillieu government.

"If any government can be beaten after one term, the Baillieu government is showing all the signs of being a one-term government," Griffin says.

Labor frontbencher Gavin Jennings, an Andrews confidant who has know him for decades, says he was immediately struck by the sophistication of his thinking and knowledge at an early age.

"He presented like a 40-year-old even back then," Jennings says.

A number of his colleagues, including Jennings, describe him as an internally inclusive figurehead, who is loyal to his staff, and has a natural inclination to get along with people.

In his first speech to the party room after the 2010 election loss, Andrews told devastated colleagues he wanted his leadership to be one each and every one of them felt they owned.

"It was a strong statement of inclusion at the right time," one said.

But there are fears his determination and drive can sometimes be a liability, preventing him presenting a more mellow image to the wider public.

"His best [political] lines are acutely punchy and always on the money, but they can sometimes be seen as sarcastic and belittling," Jennings says.

"Instead of sounding considered, sometimes when he gets on television or is in Parliament he can sound snarky. That continues to be a challenge for him."

Andrews also sets high standards for himself. As health minister, Andrews was considered across his brief at a forensic level of detail. When Labor lost the 2010 Victorian election he left office enjoying a high regard among the health sector.

But there were also dark spots. He had been left red-faced after failing to acknowledge early enough problems of hospitals manipulating waiting times for surgery and emergency department care.

"He thought he knew the system's ins and outs, but then to be shown up as not being on top of the bookkeeping practices. Personally he took that very hard and he marked himself down for it," someone close to the situation said.

If Andrews has a weakness it is his caution over policy issues to date. His position on the east-west tunnel — a significant issue in the byelection for the inner-city seat of Melbourne — is, for example, ambiguous, despite the project originally being flagged by the former Labor government.

Labor's existential battle with the Greens is also seen as a weakness, a fight the Baillieu government hopes to exploit.

"They are paralysed by their puny arm wrestle for control of the left," says a senior government strategist. "They should both eat some spinach and get in a cage. I suspect despite whoever wins [the Melbourne byelection] the Victorian community will be none the wiser about their vision for our future."

Dean of social sciences at RMIT Professor David Hayward says Andrews has so far done a very good job as opposition leader to hold the party room together over a very difficult time.

"It would have been easy for the party to have turned onto itself," he says."The trickier bit is the policy end.

"There is a great big hole in state politics for someone to come in and say this is what we stand for. Labor has got to be thinking cleverly. What do they stand for? How do they address fairness into the system?"

"That is the bit we haven't seen shine yet. This is the moment for him [Andrews] to come out and show us what he is like and what he has to offer. He was highly regarded as a minister and in the public service, and has kept the party together at a difficult time. But does he have the interpersonal skills and the capacity to inspire?"