Jeff Kennett urges Governor-General to reconsider Daniel Andrews gong
Jeff Kennett says the Governor-General and the Council for the Order of Australia have both ‘dramatically failed in discharging their responsibilities’ in awarding an AC to Daniel Andrews.
Jeff Kennett has written to David Hurley, urging the Governor-General to reconsider awarding a Companion of the Order of Australia to fellow former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.
Mr Andrews’s receipt of Australia’s highest civilian honour in Monday’s King’s Birthday awards received a mixed reception, with veteran Melbourne radio host Neil Mitchell declaring that if the former premier deserves the gong, the honours system “is broken” and families of Covid pandemic victims expressing their dismay.
Anthony Albanese congratulated his Labor former colleague, while current Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan praised her predecessor’s “energy for reform”, and the state’s Treasurer Tim Pallas – who is presiding over net debt headed for $187.8bn by 2027-28 – declared the award “truly well deserved.”
The Australian asked Mr Kennett what he made of the fact that Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Jeremi Moule – who was appointed to his $700,000 plus role by Mr Andrews in 2020 – is Victoria’s representative on the Council of the Order of Australia, the 19-member body that considers nominations for the awards.
Mr Kennett said he was not sure what role Mr Moule had played, nor whether departmental secretaries had served in such roles in the past, including under his government, “but what I will say is I think the Governor-General and the Council for the Order of Australia have both dramatically failed in discharging their responsibilities”.
“The citation that seeks to justify Daniel’s appointment talks about a health system which is now in decline and shattered. It talks about infrastructure, very little of which has been completed, all of which is substantially behind time in delivery, and because of mismanagement is billions of dollars over-budget, and it means that generations of Victorians will be paying the price for both his economic and social failures,” he said.
“So I have no idea where the Governor-General has been for the last five years, and I don’t know where chairman of the Council of the Order of Australia Ms (Shelley) Reys has been, or where the 19 members of that council have been.
“Suffice to say they must have been underground without any access to what’s been happening on the surface, because they have now set a new low standard when making these awards.
“The bigger your failure, the higher the award. I don’t know to what extent Mr Moule supported or even brought this nomination to the council.
“I don’t know whether it was the PM or Jacinta Allan, but I think Australians are entitled to know what the process was, because it is extraordinary and it defies all logic.”
Mr Kennett received an AC in 2005, six years after leaving office, for “service to the Victorian parliament and the introduction of initiatives for economic and social benefit, to business and commerce, and to the community in the development of the arts, sport and mental health awareness strategies”.
He said it was “most unusual” that Mr Andrews had received the award less than nine months after he had resigned as premier last September.
Mitchell agreed, lamenting in a Nine News opinion piece: “Who decided it was a sensible decision to fast-track this for a man who left behind a divided state with crumbling services and a debt level which condemns generations to a life with lesser government services. And why?”
“Surely any person receiving an AC should have worked to make the world a better place. Daniel Andrews left a state divided by bitterness. He seems rewarded for failure,” Mitchell said.
Frank Micallef, who lost both of his parents to Covid in 2020 as a result of infection control breaches in the Andrews government’s hotel quarantine program, told the Herald Sun news of the award made him “sick to my stomach”.
“If you want to reduce the credibility of an award like that, give one to (Mr Andrews),” he said.
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