Daniel Andrews was one of the most ruthlessly effective political leaders Australian politics has produced, and also by a considerable distance one of the worst state premiers we’ve ever seen in substance.
Very unusually for a state leader, he made significant international waves. He did this by defying both the federal government – then a Coalition government – and the policy of the federal Labor Party, to sign up Victoria to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The federal government, fully supported by federal Labor, assessed the BRI as a dangerous concerted effort by the Chinese Communist Party to increase Beijing’s geo-strategic power. Andrews undermined the national position by signing up anyway, thus giving Beijing a great propaganda coup. It could argue that Victoria’s decision demonstrated Canberra’s unreasonableness.
This was characteristic Andrews. The text of the agreement was secret and nothing ever eventuated from it to Victoria’s economic benefit.
As always, cynical politics was key, to convince ethnic-Chinese Australian voters the Coalition was anti-Chinese.
Andrews displayed deeply authoritarian instincts. He refused to appear for normal interviews on the top-rating ABC Melbourne radio station or its commercial rival, 3AW. Once it would have been unthinkable for a premier to avoid talking directly to such large numbers of voters.
Victoria under Andrews developed a disturbingly dysfunctional democratic culture.
First, there was the gleeful excess of the petty bossiness of Victoria’s absurdly elongated Covid lockdowns.
Second was the way Andrews sidelined mainstream media. Using the powers of incumbency to know just what voters were thinking, Andrews’ team crafted its messages for the simplistic sloganeering of social media.
Third, where possible he sidelined parliament, describing it as irrelevant during the pandemic lockdown and all but ignoring the many charges of impropriety against his government.
Fourth, he used a report that found, shock horror, there was branch-stacking in the Victorian ALP to suspend the operations even of the Labor Party itself in his state.
Andrews did not manage the budget. Hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on cancelled infrastructure and events, and the state debt ballooned wildly, far worse than any other state.
Andrews has always been of Labor’s Socialist Left and has pursued identity politics, radical education policies and legislative practices to restrict the freedoms of Christian schools and institutions. This had political as well as ideological motives, trying to fend off the Green challenge to Labor’s inner-city seats.
And, contemptibly, Andrews refused to say he respected the High Court’s acquittal of Cardinal George Pell.
Andrews leaves behind a nearly bankrupt state with compromised institutions and a toxic political culture. Hopefully, we won’t see his like again.
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