Newspoll: Steady Andrews takes advantage of crisis

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: Getty Images

Daniel Andrews was already polling well before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his sixth year as Victorian Premier, Andrews was seen to be “getting things done”, up against an uninspiring opposition, in a left-leaning state willing to forgive excessive spending and ideological social policy when jobs were being created and infrastructure built.

A former health minister and the longest-serving first minister in national cabinet, Andrews was well-placed to handle the pandemic, and to use it to his long-term strategic advantage.

Although the pair barely knew each other prior to the crisis, Andrews rapidly built a strong relationship with his Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, who pushed for an early, hard lockdown.

Andrews arguably overreached on March 22 when he and his NSW Liberal counterpart Gladys Berejiklian declared they would shut down “all non-essential activity” within 48 hours, without defining “non-essential”, leaving businesses and workers panicked and confused until the situation could be clarified by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and later Andrews himself.

Despite disagreements with the commonwealth in the weeks since, most notably over schools, Andrews has shown he has learnt from his early blunder, keen to promote an image of national cabinet unity at every opportunity.

The Andrews government has been strategic in its use of its own departmental modelling to sell its handling of both the health and the economic crisis.

While Department of Health and Human Services modelling showing 36,000 Victorians would have died without a lockdown was surely a wild exaggeration given the per capita numbers are far worse than those seen in Italy, Spain or New York, or indeed during the Spanish flu — the public largely lapped it up amid the successful flattening of the COVID-19 case curve as proof of a job well done.

Newspoll on premiers in coronavirus crisis

Department of Treasury and Finance modelling showing a 14 per cent decline in gross state product and job losses of up to 270,000 was also clearly a political document produced with the aim of painting a bleak scenario the Andrews government can say it has avoided in coming months, as indicated by Treasurer Tim Pallas’s admission under questioning from The Australian that it was a “worst-case scenario”.

The government’s passage last week of a bill granting it $24.5bn in emergency funding will no doubt give it the opportunity to fix problems such as cost blowouts on major infrastructure projects under the guise of stimulating a COVID-19-ravaged economy.

A $1.3bn commitment to create 4000 ICU beds which will almost certainly not be needed is also likely to be able to be diverted to reducing elective surgery wait lists which had blown out prior to the crisis.

While inconsistencies between Victoria’s physical distancing policies and those of other states on activities such as golf and recreational fishing have made little sense from a health perspective and angered some, the latest Newspoll data shows such concerns are marginal when compared with the overwhelming perception of a co-ordinated response which has minimised the health and economic cost of the pandemic to individuals.

Daniel Andrews’s social media team have also been in overdrive selling the message, whether publishing frequently asked questions aimed at clarifying physical distancing rules, or posting videos of Dan at home cooking with Cath and the kids — content which has proven popular even among audiences usually apathetic about politics.

Newspoll on premiers in coronavirus crisis