Victoria Labor has been too tricky, too often

Daniel Andrews. Picture: Andrew Henshaw.

The Andrews government may have paid back $387,800 of taxpayers’ money but there is the not so small matter of the $1m legal bill arising from its High Court challenge to the Ombudsman.

Labor had no choice but to sign the small cheque so the taxpayer can recover the money rorted in the name of fighting the 2014 Victorian election.

But the broader question is why Labor now thinks it is uncool to misuse $387,800 but it’s then cool to spend a stack more blocking the Ombudsman from doing her job.

It looks increasingly like Labor has political amnesia, forgetting the legacy of the Bracks and Brumby governments, particularly the Bracks era.

Bracks won office in 1999 in no small way because of the campaign for openness and accountability in public life.

Jeff Kennett had gone to war against the then auditor-general and Labor pledged to restore what it said was integrity in public life.

Daniel Andrews doesn’t need a history lesson because he was around the Labor Party at the end of the Kennett government.

What he does need is the ability to steady his government as it begins the downhill run to the election.

Because this scandal revolves more around principle than huge sums of money, the Coalition will not have an easy time using it as a blunt political instrument, given leader Matthew Guy was recently exposed having dinner with a man accused of having links to organised crime.

It can be really hard in 2018 knowing how long people’s memories are.

Instinctively, the rorts for votes scandal should give Guy the opportunity to capitalise on the perception that Andrews is running a tricky government that cannot be trusted.

The Coalition will be able to campaign in each affected electorate, selling the story of the relevant MP having done the wrong thing with their electoral office salaries. But it doesn’t address the big issues facing the community, cost of living being chief amongst them.

To that end, the rorts for votes affair is unlikely to directly influence who will win government but it will raise further doubts about Labor’s broad integrity.