Family businessman Ian Cook to slug it out with Daniel Andrews in Mulgrave

Businessman Ian Cook is running against Daniel Andrews in Mulgrave. Picture: Tim Carafa

Predicting election results is high risk. But there is a particularly interesting race in Daniel Andrews’ electorate of Mulgrave, where the Victorian Premier faces a challenge rare in Australian history – from a family businessman.

Victorians go to the polls on November 26. In Mulgrave, a large campaign bus that travels around the electorate spearheading the Ian Cook campaign pivots on one word – corruption – and invites voters to take a selfie with a giant slug.

Andrews’ name is not mentioned on the bus. There is no need, because in many parts of Victoria, and certainly in the Mulgrave electorate, the words SlugGate and corruption don’t require the name of Andrews to convey their message.

More than 500 volunteers are lining up to help Cook, some from interstate, while the money to afford the bus, campaign headquarters and campaign material has also poured in.

The horror of the Ian Cook story has also resonated with top people. Former senior police officers who operate in an organisation headed by a former Victorian police commissioner, Kel Glare, have undertaken the detailed police research work required to uncover the SlugGate scandal. Top silk Russell Richter is taking the Cook case to court although hearings have been postponed until after the election. Cook could never afford Richter’s fees, so he is clearly receiving help.

The Cook story has many lessons for politicians, including Anthony Albanese.

Around 2009, the Prime Minister (then the federal regional development and local government minister) and Daniel Andrews (then the Victorian health minister) set up a company called Community Chef to compete with private food operators to provide home and hospital meals.

This put Andrews and Albanese into direct competition with Ian Cook and his I Cook Foods business.

Cook knew the food business well and made good profits while the government-owned operation was stuck in the red. Both the Victorian and federal governments were forced to pour large sums into the Community Chef business to cover the losses.

But eventually it became clear that there was no future for Community Chef unless the business had a guaranteed market share.

But for the Victorian government to deliver a guaranteed market required fewer private competitors. In 2019, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services – later to be a prominent player in the Covid-19 quarantine fiasco – received “a report” that there might have been traces of listeria in sandwiches provided by I Cook Foods to a hospital. The local council also sent in an inspector who apparently found a slug in the I Cook Food plant.

Later checks discovered that the report was a complete fabrication and there was no listeria in sandwiches provided by I Cook Foods.

There is considerable doubt as to how that slug got there – it certainly couldn’t have crawled in. But there was no time to check and I Cook Foods was promptly put out of business.

The Mulgrave electorate is peppered with small businesses. The closure of a reputable small business by a government department on the basis of fabricated evidence reminds many of what happened in their country of origin. The slug is more powerful than words.

Cook is a true independent with no issue but to end government corruption and the persecution of family business.

The entire Australian family business community will watch the November 26th election with fascination because if Ian Cook can win then maybe others can stand for parliament when bad government policies destroy a successful family businesses.

Of course many in the electorate are also aware of the Andrews contribution to higher energy prices and his actions in the Covid-19 disaster.

There’s just a chance that if Andrews is removed, the new government will want to lower energy prices while reducing emissions. Victoria’s enormous low-cost onshore reserves of gas that can be made carbon neutral and do not require fracking are available to lower cost of living.

Its almost as though there is a Svengali style relationship between Andrews and Albanese. It started with the bizarre 2009 investment in the food processing operation. More recently, Albanese poured billions into the controversial suburban rail line in Melbourne – albeit some of it clawed back by the commonwealth slashing aid to Victorian hospitals.

Federal public servants are clearly instructed not to take seriously the work of giant US petroleum engineers Sproule/MHA who undertook the reservoir work which triggered the Esso/Gippsland Gas joint venture involving BlueScope which Andrews blocked.

Canberra’s Australian gas policy options do not embrace the Sproule/MHA documented reserves. But when it comes to Victoria, they are dictated by a Daniel Andrews committee which was given $42m to check whether Victoria had onshore gas. Andrews instructed the committee not to look where Sproule/MHA had estimated the enormous low-cost gas reserves and certain other places where there might be gas. Dutifully the committee concluded there was no onshore gas, so forming part of Labor’s energy policy.

While a Svengali type relationship between Albanese and Andrews is journalistic satire, the Sproule/MHA reserves assessment and Andrews’ instructions to the gas committee are a matter of parliamentary record. Ian Cook’s Mulgrave challenge is a Victorian issue that has national cost of living and emissions reduction repercussions.