Daniel Andrews’ Labor has done this before

Cathy Freeman celebrates winning the women's 400m at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Picture: Pat Scala

Daniel Andrews was rising through Victorian Labor’s administrative ranks when senior ministers in the Bracks government foolishly used the cover of Cathy Freeman’s Olympic 400m gold medal run to gut the terms of reference to the then-royal commission into allegations of impropriety in Victoria’s privatised ambulance emergency dispatch services.

It was late 2000 but the Intergraph history is important and relevant to the tricky mess that the Andrews government finds itself in today. Voters do not like governments using their ambulance services – in any way – for cynical political purposes.

The timing of the Sydney Olympics-era gutting of the royal commission was never forgotten, each spin tactic scrutinised throughout the life of the Bracks/Brumby governments.

Andrews’ decision to release his own damning ambulance report in the middle of the AFL ­finals and without the Premier at the lectern has the same potential to stain the government.

The weight of the 2022 report is in the fact that 33 Victorian deaths had been linked to ambulance and triple-0 delays.

But the message in Labor’s handling of the current crisis is intriguing in its own way. For what seemed like an eternity during the great Covid shutdown, Andrews fronted the media each day, creating something of a nat­ional shooting gallery for his critics and a forum to build respect among his large number of supporters. The clear message from Saturday’s failure to appear at the ambulance media conference is that the Premier’s brand has shifted since the darkest days of 2020 in particular. Where once standing in front of the nation was deemed to be a political positive, Labor has gone into something of a pre-election protection mode.

None of the debate about who appeared and when on Saturday will captivate the average Victorian voter, but clearly Labor does not want to link Andrews with any more bad news.

It coincides with concerns that Labor will face a late surge towards the Coalition, in a similar manner to the 1999 Kennett election, though that was to Labor. Few are seriously thinking about a Labor loss on November 26, with the Coalition needing 18 seats to govern in its own right, but an 11-seat swing against Labor would put it into minority and create a troublesome third term.

Andrews is forever strategic.

The decision to avoid the ambulance report media conference on Saturday will have been based on internal polling and instinct that a Collingwood MCG final would drown out the damage of the investigation. What Labor hard-heads didn’t count on was the relentlessness of the media coverage that followed. Yet the history was there and it was written in the 2000 Olympics. The media narrative is no doubt being driven in part by the perception that Labor is unassailable.

But Andrews must soon confront the fallout of higher petrol prices, a cliched, tough post-election federal budget and the damage rising interest rates will inflict on voters.

Forget that these are federal responsibilities.

If ever voters have reason to be grumpy in the run-up to a state election, it is now.