What Richard III and Dan Andrews have in common

Dan Andrews may well be remembered as the worst Victorian premier since 1945, writes John Carroll. Picture: Getty Images

One of the major political events of 2023 was the departure of Daniel Andrews as Victorian premier. He was a phenomenon the like of which has not been seen in Australian politics. Even his life after politics continues to gain national attention.

“Now is the winter of our discontent,” runs the famous opening line of Shakespeare’s King Richard III. In Victoria, we might parrot, now is the summer of our discontent.

My instinctive association, in searching round for precedents in order to make sense of the public man, was surprising even to myself – Shakespeare’s Richard III. On the surface, a most unlikely fit: a hunchback king who ruled for little over two years before being killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Richard was a master political operator, towering over his peers in manipulative cunning. Outsmarting them all, he was a barefaced hypocrite, plotting and cheating his way to power, scheming with duplicitous promises and denials. A powerful authoritarian with no conscience until the end, he strongarms those who resist him, intimidating them into silence. His ferocity leaves listeners helpless. He has no compunction in having anyone who stands in his way, or crosses him, including child princes, murdered.

King Richard III is Shakespeare’s second-longest play, after Hamlet. Most striking is the fact that Richard is almost always on stage, and he speaks a third of the lines. This is singularly Richard’s play. He is a vile monster, yet, as critic Harold Bloom puts it, he converses with the audience, wooing it with outrageous charm. He almost makes the false more attractive than the true or the virtuous.

Richard strides the stage, a Machiavellian colossus who is, at the same time, solitary and alone. He reflects just before the end: What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.

Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.

Richard’s genius is for conniving his pathway to power. He has no talent for ruling – in fact, once in power he loses all practical sense and tactical nous. He leaves wall-to-wall disaster behind, crying out as his last words, the repeated refrain: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

King Richard III.

Daniel Andrews spent nine years bending the state to his will, not to mention lording it menacingly over his cowering, intimidated underlings in the Labor Party. He was master of obsessive control over self and others, yet, on occasion, an arrogant swagger could be glimpsed, and a self-satisfied smirk. Like Richard, his was a virtuoso act in gaining power for himself, yet he showed a reckless lack of prudence in how he used it. The mock title “Dictator Dan” seems strangely apposite the more that is revealed about his rule.

King Henry VII had a much easier task of cleaning up after Richard’s chaotic reign than will be the case in Victoria. The state’s financial reputation is shot; its debt will take at least a generation to clear, soon rising to an incredible quarter of the whole economy, and equal to that of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined. The state’s roads, city and country, are riddled with potholes. Andrews’ favoured union, the thuggish CFMEU, dominates building sites across Melbourne – a decent Labor government, but a distant memory, that of John Cain, fought the building union’s predecessor, the corrupt BLF. CFMEU members were allowed to work during lockdown while schools and children’s playgrounds were closed, aggravating the spreading contagion of teenage mental distress.

Energy supply is in a shambles, after poor planning for medium-term electricity generation, and the premier having condemned citizens to double the price for gas, and more, that they should be paying – given vast untapped reserves in Gippsland, which he refuses to open up, for ideological reasons. Victorian households are atypically gas-dependent, having been encouraged in that direction by decades of cheap gas.

In politics, good fortune is a necessary accompaniment to individual will. The door was opened for Richard with the untimely death of King Edward IV. The times, likewise, suited Daniel Andrews. He came into office after a period of dithering, paralysed Coalition government, with him projecting the contrasting image of a strong, can-do leader. The issue at the time was railway level crossings, which he set about removing. He always exuded energy and determination.

The second ace Andrews was dealt by fortune was Covid. In the early days, horror imagery from hospitals in northern Italy and rows of coffins lining the streets in Brooklyn, New York, had the population in terror, and uniquely receptive to an authoritative premier, who addressed them eloquently day after day, for months on end, in clear, calm and decisive reports, with just the right amount of gravity.

The details of hospital quarantine bungling and excessive lockdowns were masked by the soothing sense that a strong leader was in control. A counter to rampaging anxiety is the masochistic defence, which the Victorian population slipped into, of seeking punishment in order to feel better.

Normal democratic practice was scorned. The premier’s ruthless control of messaging ranged from switching off the checks of cabinet, party room and parliament to refusing to be interviewed on radio – notably by Neil Mitchell on 3AW, the voice of commonsense, balanced and intelligent Victoria. In his fading days, the premier even extended his ban to usually sympathetic ABC radio. Thereby, he cavalierly shrugged off a sequence of corruption scandals. “I am I” caught the tone of this self-confessedly thick-skinned character.

What of the aftermath? My sense is that his rule has left a sour taste in the mouths of Victorians. In a cruel association with the crookback king, Andrews broke his back in a freak holiday accident that forced him to take 100 days off. The horse he might have traded for his kingdom was a portfolio of achievement – like the genuine one left by his successful, can-do predecessor, and true nemesis, Jeff Kennett. But praise in the history books, like Richard’s horse, will almost certainly elude Dan Andrews.

With civic unease about his legacy, he left the stage a dark, glowering figure, ranting foul-mouthed abuse at his party room, before sliding away into the shadows of oblivion. He may well be remembered as the worst Victorian premier since 1945.

John Carroll is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at La Trobe University.