Woke, broke, tainted by scandal

Daniel Andrews is a master retail politician. But his legacy after more than 8½ years as Victorian Premier is a state that is broke, woke and tainted by corruption. After pulling off a strong win in the 2018 election, despite the “red shirts’’ scandal centred on the misuse of taxpayers’ money for political purposes by the Labor Party during the 2014 election campaign, the Premier has grown increasingly confident in his “nothing to see here’’ responses to adverse findings about his government. Getting away with “red shirts’’ appeared to embolden him as to how far he would push boundaries.

His sterling defence of Socialist Left factional colleague and Climate Action, Energy and ­Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio is the latest example. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody more focused on their duties than her,’’ Mr Andrews says. “She’s a person of character and integrity.” Revelations about a state branch associated with Ms D’Ambrosio, sometimes mooted as a future deputy premier, are matters for the state party, not for him, Mr Andrews insists. As Rachel Baxendale wrote on Tuesday, he has not explained why Ms D’Ambrosio should be treated differently to four other ministers who lost their jobs in 2020-21 over branch-stacking allegations, including rival powerbroker Adem Somyurek. Mr Andrews referred that matter to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission. But, despite Mr Somyurek and others on the Right claiming widespread branch-stacking had occurred in Mr Andrews’ faction, IBAC confined its investigation to Mr Somyurek’s faction.

Mr Andrews also commissioned a probe by former premier Steve Bracks and former federal deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin into branch stacking. The Australian revealed on Tuesday only 13 of 132 members of the Lalor South branch continued to be registered following that investigation. At least two people had their signatures forged to have their memberships renewed after their deaths. Nine others who were long-term members before they were struck off by the internal ALP probe say they cannot recall ever paying for their memberships. Party documents also show that until July 2019, Ms D’Ambrosio’s branch was meeting in her electorate office once a month, long after an Ombudsman’s report into the red shirts rort highlighted Labor’s improper use of taxpayer-funded resources for political purposes. The meetings in Ms D’Ambrosio’s office showed she learnt little from the red shirts affair.

Other scandals on the Premier’s watch have also centred on politics. They include the government’s awarding of a $1.2m contract to the Labor-affiliated Health Workers Union. In April, Mr Andrews claimed the IBAC report into the matter was “educational”, which it was, but claimed there were “ no findings against anyone”. To the contrary, IBAC found “evidence of misconduct and improper influence” at the highest levels of his government. The lack of oversight of advisers by ministers – offering “the potential for plausible deniability” – raised questions about the “efficacy of the Westminster convention of individual ministerial responsibility as an accountability mechanism to parliament”, the watchdog found. We await with interest IBAC’s report into the government’s relationship with the firefighters union.

The latest scandal raises the question of how long Mr Andrews’ teflon coating can last. That will depend on the limits of voters’ tolerance, his career plans and the opposition’s ability to regain credibility. It was right to refer the matter to IBAC.