Writer’s Dan Andrews crush may be misguided

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews looks on at the daily briefing on July 19.

So, how hot is Dan Andrews?

That’s the question being asked by The Age this weekend, courtesy of a piece by Monica Dux, which appears under the headline: “The strange feeling I have when I watch Daniel Andrews.”

Dux is promoting the work on Twitter, explaining how she’s “crushing on Dan.”

It wasn’t always this way. She concedes that Dan can come across a bit nerdy, and “never shone on the charm front.” But then came the coronavirus crisis — patients drowning in their own lung fluid, and so on — and, she says, “I suddenly found myself transfixed.”

It’s his “firm” manner, apparently.

“Dan had stepped up and he was suddenly hot,” she writes. “Strictly in a leadership sort of way.”

But now, as the aged care centres have started wheeling out the bodies, she is having a bit of a rethink.

“How did it all go so wrong?’ she wonders. Had she been “seduced by all that sexy straight talk?”

Readers are of course having a field day on Twitter, admitting to their own sweet crushes.

“Arthur Fadden could glaze me like a Christmas ham,” says one.

Well, whatever floats your boat, but the Dux piece makes some claims, which must be challenged.

She says: “Instead of obfuscating and shifting blame, the way politicians always do, Dan faced up and took responsibility. He admitted fault, and he kept talking straight. And I kept trusting him.”

Well, no.

He has not taken responsibility.

He has called an inquiry, and put in place a retired judge, whose job it now is to tell them what they did wrong.

Of course, they already know what they did wrong.

This second wave of the virus broke out of hotel quarantine.

Where NSW called in the cops to manage its quarantining travellers; Victoria bought in untrained security guards, who immediately set about breaching well-known infection protocols.

Security guards tend to get a hard time for being big burly boofheads, but it’s actually a skilled and serious job to be able to manage anxious people, many of them under terrible stress, using just your voice, your authority, your presence.

Victoria didn’t run a proper tender; staff weren’t properly supervised.

Some took their masks off.

Some fell asleep on the job.

Quarantined travellers were allowed to do shopping and, if rumour is to be believed, quite a bit of other sexy stuff.

And the virus got out, and it’s now cutting a swath through Victoria’s most vulnerable communities, including public housing towers, where people live in close quarters, and work as hospital cleaners and Uber drivers.

If that’s not enough, the State knew it was in trouble, way back in June.

A leaked email shows the government pleading for help from the Australian Defence Force in monitoring the hotels.

Now Albury’s got the military on the border, and Victorians are supposed to swoon at Dan’s soothing tones? Sounds like fan fiction.