QDOS documents: Victorian Labor’s secret polling for Daniel Andrews during Covid pandemic revealed

Daniel Andrews used a secret taxpayer-funded program to monitor views on him during Victoria’s 112-day lockdown, with his top strategist briefing cabinet on the results.

Daniel Andrews’ government fought the release of the QDOS briefings for two years but handed over almost 200 pages to The Australian just weeks before an appeal was due in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Picture: Daniel Pockett

Daniel Andrews used a secret ­taxpayer-funded program to monitor Victorians’ views about his personal performance during the state’s 112-day pandemic lockdown, with the Premier’s top ­political strategist briefing cabinet on the results.

Almost 200 pages of documents and emails — released to The Australian by the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) after a two-year Freedom of ­Information battle — reveals QDOS Research also conducted extensive and regular monitoring of Victorians’ reaction to lockdown restrictions such as the 8pm curfew, the 5km travel limit, the metro-regional split on rules, industry closures, police conduct and who was to blame for hotel quarantine leaks, which triggered the deadly second wave.

The newly released documents about the QDOS operation are further evidence that, while the government said lockdowns were guided by health advice, the tough measures were also informed by QDOS intelligence.

The documents show that the Premier’s Private Office largely controlled the operation by QDOS, a firm owned and operated by veteran Labor and Andrews strategist John Armitage.

QDOS briefed both the ­Andrews cabinet and DPC that despite the hotel quarantine fiasco the Premier and the government retained overwhelming support and Mr Andrews was “highly ­regarded”.

“Actions taken now reinforce the competence brand already well established, even with the knowledge of poor hotel quarantine,” QDOS said.

The trove of previously confidential documents reveal that during the second Covid-19 wave, which claimed more than 800 lives, QDOS was closely tracking public perceptions of the Premier’s leadership and compiling ‘‘cabinet in confidence’’ briefing notes analysing the research.

QDOS ‘‘cabinet in confidence’’ briefing notes to the DPC through July and August of 2020 reveal the Premier’s performance was tested in focus groups of metropolitan and regional Victorians.

Briefing notes and emails also reveal that, while the government said its pandemic response was shaped by health advice, it also ­ordered intensive online surveys and focus groups to gauge public’s reaction to lockdown measures.

Responding to a series of ­detailed questions from The Australian, an Andrews government spokesperson said: ‘‘This community feedback helped us understand the most effective health message carriers in our efforts to keep the community safe, support our health workers, and encourage people to get vaccinated and save lives during a one in a 100-year pandemic.’’

Mr Armitage did not respond to questions from The Australian.

The Andrews government has fought the release of the QDOS briefings for two years but handed over almost 200 pages to The Australian just weeks before an appeal was due in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The raw data underpinning the QDOS analysis has still not been released.

QDOS has been paid more than $2m in taxpayer funds since 2016 to conduct the Andrews ­government’s community surveys. Mr Armitage boasts about his firm’s expertise in “changing public opinion” and trades on its ability to “squeeze, pump and stir” public opinion.

A QDOS “cabinet in confidence” briefing note from a focus group held on August 5, 2020 in Colac, as Melbourne was enduring one of the world’s toughest ­lockdowns, stated: “Dan Andrews. Sentiment in these groups was similar to earlier rounds and these people were considerably more likely to jump to the defence of the government and Dan Andrews – ‘unprecedented times’, ‘Doing his best in really difficult times’, ­‘Listening to the experts’, ‘Really difficult decisions’.”

Another QDOS briefing note of a focus group held on August 4 in Mornington, briefed the ­Andrews cabinet that while the hotel quarantine fiasco took some “gloss” off the government, there was “strong support for Dan ­Andrews and a broad acknowledgement of the good job he and the Government are doing in very difficult circumstances”.

“People have become less likely to freely offer support for Dan ­Andrews but if he is criticised by one person a bigger number stridently come to his defence.

“We can reasonably conclude that the Government and the ­primary spokesperson, Dan ­Andrews, still have credibility and the confidence of the people who will trust, support and follow the decisions that need to be taken.”

A QDOS briefing note from focus group research in Ararat, sent to the DPC on July 24, 2020, reveals that political questions about the government and the Premier were routinely asked in taxpayer-funded metropolitan and regional focus groups. “The Ararat groups weren’t that different to Bentleigh … for the most part people felt the ­Government was in an unprecedented, invidious position and was doing its best to protect the community. It had strong standing and credibility. The Premier was highly regarded.”

A QDOS briefing to the DPC sent on July 9, as the scale of the second wave was emerging, after focus groups in outer suburban Heidelberg and Deer Park, stated: “The Government, and the ­Premier in particular, are seen as doing the right thing to get on top of this spike. The actions taken now ­reinforce the competence brand already well established, even with the knowledge of poor hotel ­quarantine.”

Much of QDOS’s political ­intelligence-gathering operation has been coordinated by the Premier’s Private Office. Many of the documents refer to the “PPO’’ approving and commissioning where, when and who was to be surveyed. The Australian has previously reported that in less than one year, more than 1800 pages of survey spreadsheets were sent by QDOS to the government.

The QDOS documents show aspects of the surveys did test public perceptions about significant health measures including hand washing, social isolation, sneezing into your arm, masks and working from home. But they also reveal that the Andrews government was highly sensitive to the public reaction to major Covid-19 restrictions and was updated on public sentiment by QDOS when rules were tightened or relaxed during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

One of the key findings in the QDOS briefing is that despite the disastrous impact on the economy and education of children, the public still believed tackling Covid-19 was more important.

“A health crisis. Despite the pandemic adversely impacting ­virtually all these people (from job losses, to greater isolation, ­postponement of important life activities, remote schooling, ­inability to see their kids) they all saw it as a health crisis that needed to everything thrown at it to get it under control,” said a QDOS briefing in August 2020 to the ­Andrews cabinet.

The surveys found, according to QDOS, that while there was an awareness of problems within the government’s quarantine hotels, “they resisted criticism of the ­Government for problems with hotel quarantine and squarely blamed companies trying to make a quick buck and not properly training their workers, as well as individual ‘stupidity’.”

A separate QDOS briefing note marked “cabinet in confidence” from August 2020, concluded the second lockdown was “relatively less shocking and frightening (despite more deaths and community transmission) and more dreary and depressing”.

This briefing, from focus groups in Mornington, did detect some community concern about the hotel quarantine leaks, with language along the lines of ­“Victoria was the only state that didn’t use the army” and an ­increased sense that “decision ­makers should have known well how dodgy the private security ­industry is”.

QDOS’s other key takeout for the Andrews cabinet was that people supported the tough stage four lockdown measures. “People support the introduction of tougher restrictions,” QDOS said. “As they see it something had to be done because clearly the daily case numbers weren’t going down enough on Stage 3 restrictions.”

QDOS told cabinet that “most people seemed to take the 8pm to 5am curfew in their stride and see it a daily minor imposition and just another sensible tightening of ­restrictions in response to the health crisis”.

“For a few the symbolism made them uneasy,” QDOS said. “Even these few didn’t oppose the curfew or see it as a sign of the imposition of undemocratic rule in Victoria.”

The QDOS briefing note ­concluded that, from surveys in some areas, people adjusted to the 5km travel limit and “we might reasonably hypothesise that ­uncertainty about the implications of the 5k rule will quickly subside in the next week or two”.

In August 2020, Mr Armitage appeared before the government’s eight-member crisis cabinet and assured them research ­showed that, despite the second wave being triggered by the government’s botched hotel quarantine program, there was still solid support for the Premier among voters.

Andrews government sources have said at the time of Mr Armitage’s cabinet briefing that there was growing anxiety within Labor caucus of the political consequences from the marathon lockdown.

Sources have said that some ministers at the briefing interpreted it as conveying that the Premier still held strong community support and that they should filter this back to the nervous caucus.