The clock is ticking for Labor’s can-do man Daniel Andrews

The disastrous hotel quarantine program is behind the nation’s second virus wave. The fallout from this will shape Victorian politics for years. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

The loaded gun is now pointed at the Andrews government.

Official confirmation that the failed hotel quarantine program sparked the second coronavirus wave will haunt Labor for years.

Victoria’s plight differs to the Ruby Princess scandal in NSW principally because of the scale of the fallout.

Hotel quarantine has been the trigger for so much national health and economic harm; Australia was so frustratingly close to meeting its suppression target until the virus spread in Victoria due to official failures.

Daniel Andrews has known the extent of these failures for many weeks but has danced around the numbers.

Even though it was his government’s Department of Health and Human Services that funded the genomic testing and his own experts were being paid to read and add to the evidence.

He could have _ and should have _ released it weeks ago.

Andrews is yet to fully and meaningfully apologise for the disaster principally because he doesn’t know just how much and ultimately what he needs to apologise for.

This differs to his NSW counterpart and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

No-one impartial is suggesting Morrison should escape unscathed for the aged care failures.

But, again, we are here because of the failures that occurred at a state Cabinet level and below in Victoria.

Some of the political analysis is misreading how this scandal will unfold.

Most who watch Andrews would concede that he has been gutsy and effective in selling the broad message to the community.

No-one has ever doubted his work ethic or determination to bury his political opponents; or his strategic acumen.

This is translating in the short term to respectable polling numbers in the context of the pandemic.

But the contemporary state intentions polling is effectively meaningless.

Because people have not know exactly what they are judging Andrews on.

This is where Tuesday’s confirmation in the hotel inquiry becomes so crucial.

It will enable Andrews’s opponents to frame a very simple political message that we are here because of the quarantine failures.

Andrews, meanwhile, is still going about his business, frenetically networking on social media and embracing his broad political community.

All the while Andrews has been under intense pressure to fix the pandemic mess he has been carefully narrowcasting his message to the Labor community.

Aged care workers, nurses, teachers, unions, paramedics, the virtual army of people who got him over the line in 2014.

The Premier has not stopped preaching to these people but already evidence is showing that the crucial small business cohort is leaving the ALP nest.

The small “l” Liberal fan club that embraced Labor’s can do man are already drifting back to the right of politics.

Insiders speculate that he has kept the inner city vote, particularly among younger and middle-aged women.

This, surely, will dissipate when the unemployment lines swell next year and the economic repair job begins.

It’s one thing to fix up a few level crossings, quite another to resurrect a once roaring economy.