Daniel Andrews’ mate: bottle-o owner with access

VIP access and selfies; meet Daniel Andrews’ mate from Mulgrave.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, with Luckee Kohli to his right, at Monday night’s Diwali state reception.

Luckee Kohli loves hanging out with Daniel Andrews. The Mulgrave bottle shop owner has the photos to prove it plastered all over Facebook.

They show Indian-born Kohli and the Premier, who is the member for Mulgrave and lives a short distance from Mulgrave Cellars, at religious and cultural celebrations and major sporting events such as the Boxing Day Test.

Kohli was particularly proud of being invited into the government’s official suite at the grand prix a few years back and posted a photo of the VIP passes. The Premier’s wife, Cath, and Kohli’s wife, Sanjoo, appear in plenty of the photos too.

Another photo of Kohli and Andrews that has circulated through Melbourne’s Indian community shows the two men sitting in a backyard, the Premier dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.

“He is a friend,” Kohli told The Weekend Australian as he stood near shelves of single malt whisky and high-end spirits at his IGA bottle shop and supermarket.

“He doesn’t come anymore, too busy. He used to come, even before he was the Premier. We are the only supermarket in the area. All the locals come here.”

Several Indian-born figures who spoke to The Weekend Australian, on the condition they were not identified, said Kohli was known to boast about his ­relationship with the Premier and used the photos as proof of his ­access to power.

In a multicultural melting pot like Melbourne, it’s not surprising political leaders invest time with ethnic communities. Former Liberal premier Ted Baillieu worked hard to build a strong bond with the booming Indian community, estimated to be around 200,000 strong. Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, too, makes regular ­appearances at religious and cultural events for Indian-Australians. Kohli says Guy has been in contact, as have Liberal prime ministers.

A former Labor MP, with a deep understanding of multicultural politics in Melbourne, said both sides of politics courted the Indian vote for three reasons: the number of votes; the location of those votes; and that, in the main, the votes were not rusted on.

“They’re up for grabs,” the veteran former Labor MP said. “They’re skilled migrants. They’re clever, industrious and not locked into either side.”

Many of them live in key electorates in the outer suburbs, from Cranbourne and Narre Warren in the southeast across to areas such as Kororoit, Werribee, Wyndham Vale and Point Cook to the west.

Another Labor MP recalled that as a rookie but strategically thinking opposition leader in 2010, Andrews quickly identified the Indian diaspora as fertile ground Labor needed to own.

And Luckee Kohli, the new ­opposition leader’s local bottle shop owner, a businessman with deep connections to the Indian community, and who possesses a ready charm, was more than willing to help.

“Ted had a high level engagement with India, and so it ­(Andrews’ Indian strategy) was birthed in that period of time when the Libs were very engaged with the new community,” the Labor veteran said.

“Daniel needed to reach in, and Luckee was there to reach out. It was as simple as that. ­Luckee became his (Andrews’) main connection (to the Indian community).”

Consistent with his relentless campaigning style, Andrews has spent his eight years in office pursuing votes in the city’s big multicultural communities such as the Indians and Tamils.

It’s a strategy that has been on display this month, as the ­November 26 election draws close, with two Tamil community political fundraisers with federal Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles as the main ­drawcard.

But the big-ticket event was Monday night’s Diwali state ­reception.

At least 15 Labor MPs and candidates were invited as the Hindu religious event was brazenly transformed into a Labor election campaign night. Most of the Labor MPs who ­attended the taxpayer-funded event just happened to represent or be running in seats with large numbers of Indian voters. By the Premier’s side at the event was, of course, Luckee Kohli. And like many of the 650 guests, Kohli took the opportunity to pose for photos with his friend.

Some Indian-Australians believe Kohli had been involved in choosing the guest list, hence the snub for Victoria’s only Indian-born MP, Kaushaliya ­Vaghela, who was not invited. She is no friend of Kohli’s.

Kohli, standing in his Mulgrave Cellars shop, was disarming and generous with his time when The Weekend Australian visited on Thursday and asked him about the guest list. “No, no, no, no. I was only invited four days before. Someone must have realised they have not invited me so they ­invited me,” he said. The Premier’s office said on Friday the government compiled the guest list.

Kohli initially said that the “Premier’s office” had invited him, before correcting himself to say it was the “multicultural ­office”.

Another Labor MP said he had witnessed the friendship between Kohli and Andrews as it ­blossomed, in the wake of the 2014 election victory.

“He (Kohli) was everywhere and certainly everywhere with the imprimatur of the Premier’s private office as well,” the former Labor minister said.

“Daniel loved doing stuff with him, getting photographed with all the paint and all that stuff over them.

“Luckee was constantly at events and Daniel would treat him with a greater level of fondness and warmth than others.

“It was just something you ­acknowledged and got on with your job and acknowledged these are people who for some reason are important to Daniel.”

Running parallel to the friendship between the Premier and the bottle shop owner was Kohli’s meteoric rise as a figure of ­influence within the Indian community.

Around 2014, Kohli created the Australian Indian Strategic Group. “No membership, no hierarchy … it was just a name given to a group of people,” he told The Weekend Australian.

On August 6, 2018, it was registered with the Australian Securities & Investment Commission. Kohli was the sole director. The AISG website lists his personal mobile phone number as a point of contact.

Around this time, Kohli ­managed to get a large group of Indian businessmen and community members a face-to-face meeting with the Premier during which they proposed the government help fund two dedicated and culturally appropriate Indian aged-care facilities.

Within a few weeks of that meeting, on August 28, the ­Premier announced before a crowd of Indian community members, and with AISG banners on display, that his government would spend $14.5m buying two plots of land for the nursing homes. Not only that, the Premier went out of his way to credit the AISG with the idea and nominated Kohli’s group as a key co-ordinating organisation for the entire project.

Premier Daniel Andrews with Luckee Kohli.

“In recent times, the Australian Indian Strategy Group has been formed, a group of people who come together to talk about issues that are common to all ­Indian families from right across our city and our state,” he said, also crediting it with convincing the government to plunge $3m into a Bollywood cinema ­investment.

“It’s been such an important development where one set of policies … and requests have been made of me as the ­leader.”

The Premier told the crowd that the AISG would take a lead role in the rollout of the policy.

“There will be a ­partnership, the Australian ­Indian Strategy Group, will work to co-ordinate consultation with the community about exactly where these blocks of land will be purchased, and they will also co-ordinate the ­delivery of ­community consultation around finding an aged-care provider,” he said.

It was an extraordinary coup for the suburban bottle shop owner.

The Premier’s $14.5m ­announcement and the role of the AISG left some in government bewildered. One figure familiar with the implementation of the plan was scathing of its lack of process. Four years on, land has been purchased but neither home has yet to open.

“There was no real sense of what is the policy underlying this, there was no policy. It was just ­literally we are going to do two ­Indian aged-care facilities,” they said.

“This thing just kept going on for four years where no one really knew what was going on … it was just a f..king ordinary bit of government spending, to be brutal.

“It was the Premier’s policy … it just went around in circles, we didn’t get an outcome because it was so badly designed.”

And despite the Premier ­talking up AISG, the group played no part in the policy after the ­announcement.

“AISG were not included and no funds were transferred to them as part of community consultation,” a government spokesman said.

Asked how the $14.5m project was going, Kohli said: “No idea, no idea. I am not involved in that anymore. I was one of the committee ­members, we were involved during the discussions, and the government announced it. How they are going to do it is their business. I have no idea.”

Asked if the AISG received any government funding for its role in the project, Kohli said: “No, no, no, no. We have no financial interaction with the government in any form. Not even one cent. Not even one cent. We have not even applied for one cent grant, or anything.”

Kohli said the AISG was “dormant” and had been deregistered.

“It was a group of people, not an organisation,” he said. “It is only when the community needs something we then have some ideas we can propose to government or local MP.”

A number of Indian-Australians who have spoken on the condition of anonymity believe Kohli set himself up as a gatekeeper within the community to the Premier.

“He’s gone around showing the photographs to everyone to tell them how close he is to the Premier,” one businessman said.

“It became accepted in the ­Indian community if you want to get anything done the only way is to go through Luckee.”

A Labor MP supported this claim. “To the Indian community, what Luckee would say was, ‘everything has got to come through me. You must talk to me, you can’t talk to anyone directly, you must talk to me, to get access to the Premier’.”

Kohli rejected this characterisation. “I am not involved in ­politics. I am not even a member of any party. If there is a community thing, of course, I do what I can,” he said.

Kohli said the Liberal Party has promised his community more than Labor, ­before noting: “Liberal has actually done more, but they are not in power so their promises are of no value.”