How will history (not to mention voters) remember Daniel Andrews?

Daniel Andrews handled the coronavirus pandemic as he handles any other crisis: with strong – if belated – leadership, taking charge, fronting the media for questions, sidelining everyone else in the team, blocking anyone and anything he considers irrelevant to the task at hand, and then re-emerging as a saviour.

One of the most common responses by the public to Andrews’ handling of the pandemic was that he had done everything he could to protect Victorians. There were bureaucratic and ministerial failures, the public acknowledged, but Andrews had not let failure get in the way of ultimate success. He had listened to the experts, had worked harder than he expected everyone else to work, and had accepted that, as leader, he was responsible both for the crisis and for managing it.

Daniel Andrews after the release of an IBAC report into branch stacking.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Legacy is a fickle thing in politics, and even more so in a pandemic, but COVID-19 has redefined the Labor leader.

Andrews laid the blame for the hotel quarantine program failures at the feet of his health minister, Jenny Mikakos, who he said was accountable, and then told Judge Jennifer Coate he agreed with the counsel assisting, Rachel Ellyard, that there needed to be clearer chains of command and lines of communication, and “the fact there is no agreement between agencies and departments is not desirable in any way”.

Daniel Andrews, by Sumeyya Ilanbey.

The Coate inquiry into the failures of the hotel quarantine program exposed a pronounced lack of communication between bureaucrats and politicians, but as we look back to the initial stages of the pandemic and the orders the premier had given, a picture emerges that is incongruent with the way Andrews went on to characterise the event.

Andrews had reorganised the public services into a “series of missions” on April 3, 2020 to respond to the pandemic, telling each department secretary: “You are accountable to me.”

Andrews gave evidence at the hotel quarantine inquiry that Jenny Mikakos was accountable for the scheme - but the one time she exercised her authority and turned her attention to how the program was set up, the premier intervened and shot her down.

In mid-June 2020, the health minister asked her department’s deputy secretary, Melissa Skilbeck, to draft a new plan for hotel quarantine that included deploying Victoria Police, between 50 and 100 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel, Alfred Health and other health services staff, protective services officers and sheriffs to the accommodation sites. At the request of the Department of Health, on June 24 the emergency services commissioner, Andrew Crisp, asked the Commonwealth for 850 ADF personnel to take over from security guards and help manage the hotels.

The Commonwealth agreed, and the military was on its way, but by the next day the plan was put on hold because the Andrews government was “revising its request”. Crisp later told the hotel quarantine inquiry he withdrew his request at the behest of the Department of Justice and Community Safety, because the department was taking over the operation of the program and was looking into alternatives, including using police and corrective services staff.

Andrews did end up taking charge of the beleaguered hotel quarantine scheme, driving down cases and paying closer attention to every aspect of the program and the public health response. He blamed his ministers for not asking their secretaries pertinent questions on the pandemic response - but neither did he. For a government that shifted its entire focus on COVID-19, it failed to ensure proper oversight.

Daniel Andrews watches his then health minister Jenny Mikakos at the podium.Credit: Scott McNaughton

“Daniel is intelligent and perceptive,” says one former Labor MP. “There are scandals and dramas he should have avoided, and if he had been thinking, he would have. He’s been really good at riding out scandals. The question sometimes is, should they have been scandals in the first place?”

Lockdown

On July 16, 2021, Victoria entered its fifth lockdown for five days after some delivery drivers arrived from Sydney - where coronavirus cases were raging - sparking significant chains of transmission spanning from Melbourne to Mildura: the stay-at-home orders were extended for a further five days.

By this time, Victoria’s public health team had grown increasingly confident in its ability to snuff out COVID-19 outbreaks, and to keep any lockdowns to a maximum of 14 days, according to a state government source. Was this the result of arrogance and hubris? Just overzealousness, they replied.

There was also politics at play. An unvaccinated and maskless Bondi limousine driver who had transported international flight crews tested positive for the more virulent Delta strain of COVID-19 on June 16, 2021, leading to an outbreak that initially was mostly contained to Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs – but it very soon spread in every direction.

Andrews spent weeks berating NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian’s “soft approach” to COVID-19 restrictions, urging her to take a tougher stance and impose stricter restrictions. Berejiklian, who had by then successfully contained multiple COVID-19 outbreaks without imposing statewide lockdowns like her interstate counterparts, was refusing to heed Andrews’ unsolicited advice, despite the virus spreading rapidly through Sydney’s affluent east and the Northern Beaches, and then to the economically depressed western suburbs.

The once-close relationship between the Victorian and NSW premiers had not completely disintegrated, says senior minister Martin Pakula, who was part of the Andrews government’s COVID-19 decision-making cabinet. But Andrews was “pretty pissed off” when NSW’s coronavirus problem became a Victorian problem.

“I think that was primarily because Daniel felt, understandably, that Victoria had been unnecessarily exposed by the kind of cavalier approach NSW took to [the] Delta [variant] in the early days,” Pakula says. “Whatever you say about our handling in 2020, we did everything we could to stop it from leaching over state borders. Our view was, as bad as this is, we’ll never be forgiven if we become responsible for massive outbreaks in other parts of the country. So in addition to trying to contain it here, we tried to stop it getting out of Victoria. And I just think Dan thought [the NSW premier] had become a victim of her own publicity – ‘Gladys with the golden touch, can do no wrong, the woman who saved Australia’ – and it generated a level of hubris and a cavalier approach to dealing with the virus. It was like NSW started to believe its own bullshit, that somehow the virus behaved differently there.”

The relationship between Victoria, NSW and the Commonwealth was becoming increasingly tense throughout 2021. By the start of that year, a view had formed in Victoria that the Commonwealth was always too slow to act, according Pakula. Whether it was closing international borders, setting up quarantine, introducing restrictions, providing income and business support or, in later months, rolling out the vaccination program.

On the morning of April 9, 2021, Deputy Premier James Merlino was getting ready to fill in for Andrews at his first national cabinet meeting, and he asked his leader for tips. Andrews texted back:

Let Gladys do all the talking. And agree to nothing - those minutes are always in need of very careful review. They seem right in the shit atm [at the moment]. In all seriousness, they have got to start reporting disaggregated data. And so think, just sit back and listen to him [Morrison] outline how he is going to fix HIS vaccination program. That’s what I usually do. D.

“Without a doubt [the relationship between Victoria and the Commonwealth] was tense,” Merlino says. “There was frustration, and it wasn’t just between Victoria and the Commonwealth, it was states and territories … In those early days it was honestly Dan and Gladys driving this message that we’ve got to be serious about this pandemic, we’ve got to close the borders, because if we don’t, the thing will be unstoppable, as we were seeing in other parts of the world.“

But after the COVID-19 outbreak in NSW in July that Victoria believed could have been prevented if it were for stronger interventions, that relationship worsened.

Armed with a dash of hope and hubris, the Victorian government lifted restrictions just two weeks after the July 16 lockdown began. Andrews believed he had beaten the virus into submission yet again.

Less than a fortnight later, Victoria was back in another lockdown – its sixth one, which would last more than 70 days and force the government to abandon its strategy to eliminate COVID-19 and begrudgingly follow NSW’s lead in vaccinating the state out of the growing outbreak.

By then, Victorians had endured one of the world’s longest lockdowns – but the public health restriction that seemed to hurt the state most came on August 16, when Andrews announced the return of the curfew and a two-week extension to the city’s lockdown. Playgrounds, basketball hoops, skate parks and outdoor equipment – the last vestiges of normality for children – would be closed, Andrews said. “We are at a tipping point,” he added.

Andrews was also at a tipping point with his leadership, having lost his ability to coax and coerce the public to stay the course, and things were getting uglier. Five days after shutting down playgrounds, then-health minister Martin Foley announced changes to childcare access – only the children of essential workers would be allowed to attend, he said, without clarifying if both parents or just one needed to be an essential worker.

His office called journalists moments later, saying only one parent needed to be an essential worker for the family to access childcare. Hours later, the Department of Health contradicted the minister’s office, and said both parents must be essential workers. Less than 30 minutes later, the premier’s office overturned the Department of Health’s decision, and assured journalists that only one parent needed to be an essential worker.

Behind the scenes, the premier was growing increasingly frustrated with Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and the Department of Health over the directions they had issued, believing that at times they were too stringent and thus politically damaging. The childcare debacle had turned into a massive political headache for the government as parents around the state grew angrier.

Local MPs were fielding calls from frustrated Victorians about whether or not they could send their children to childcare, while government backbenchers and ministers – including the minister for early childhood education – were incorrectly posting on social media that under the new rules both parents needed to be essential workers.

The flipping and flopping on the childcare rules, although seemingly small in the grand scheme of things, provided the backdrop for the Andrews government’s biggest crisis, which arrived just months later: widespread vaccine mandates.

In locked-down Victoria, where there was nothing to do and nowhere to go, many had begun exploring the darker corners of the internet, particularly Facebook groups and Telegram channels. They were initially questioning the science of COVID-19 and spreading misinformation about the origins of the virus, and then turned into the anti-vaccination movement.

Ordinary Victorians who had lost a sense of their livelihood, who were anxious about their future and who had felt the full force of state intervention through lockdown laws, border closures and vaccine mandates found themselves in online forums interacting with far-right extremists.

The movement spilled from the fringes of the internet to the streets of Melbourne in mid-September 2021, when the Andrews government announced it was working on a plan to enforce COVID-19 vaccination mandates in certain industries, including construction.

Industrial relations minister Tim Pallas issued a stern warning to the construction sector: its “permitted worker status” that enabled them to work throughout lockdown could be revoked any time and sites shut down following growing coronavirus transmission and reports of people working maskless or dropping their guard during meal and drink breaks. Days later, the government followed through on its threat, and then went a step further by mandating COVID-19 vaccines for construction workers.

The reaction was feral. Tens of thousands of Victorians, mostly men and mostly construction workers, spilled out onto the streets protesting vaccine mandates, lockdowns, vaccination itself and COVID-19.

The men and women wore their high-vis and steel-capped boots and turned out every day for almost a week, wreaking havoc through the city. And for months, larger crowds turned out on Saturdays to protest everything from Andrews himself to lockdowns to vaccine mandates. The movement was not abating – and the government’s road map out of coronavirus restrictions only added fuel to the blazing fire.

Angry protesters marching through Melbourne’s CBD in late 2021. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

To announce the new rules, the government summoned the media to a press conference, where journalists were handed a copy of the plan that outlined the freedoms people could begin to enjoy once 80 per cent of the eligible population had been fully vaccinated: hospitality venues would reopen with density limits for fully vaccinated people, weddings and funerals could resume for fully vaccinated people, and all retail would open.

The document was explicit: there was no vaccine requirement for retail customers. But Andrews told reporters: “The vaccinated economy is here to stay. It will not be folded up moments after it gets to the full peak. In fact, we will add to the vaccinated economy by asking and mandating that all non-essential retail will have to be vaccinated as well – both to go in and to work as well.”

That was the first Victorians had heard they would need to be fully immunised against COVID-19 to enter non-essential retail, such as clothing stores and bookshops. Given that the announcement came without forewarning, days later Andrews said retail stores would initially open to everyone from the end of that month to give people enough notice; from late November, only the vaccinated would be allowed to enter.

The industry warned this would cause chaos, and experts queried why Victoria had decided to be so liberal with its mandates. Andrews dodged and deflected, refusing to address the substantive elements of the question and instead pointing to generalities around the pandemic, vaccines and health advice. His political strength has always been to exude a persuasive sense of conviction – his answers on widespread vaccine mandates did not waver.

The chief health officer was not initially convinced to mandate COVID-19 vaccines in “non-essential” retail, privately citing the example of parents shopping for their children’s school uniforms. This is Daniel Andrews’ Victoria, though. He is a man too proud, and too politically damaged over two years, to back down.

When the premier went on stage at Treasury Theatre to announce the road map, he said “bookshops and shoe shops” were part of Victoria’s vaccinated economy. They weren’t. The document made no mention of vaccinations being required in non-essential retail settings.

Another leader might have admitted they got it wrong or misspoke, and walked back on their announcement, but Andrews was already furious with the way the childcare directions had been handled earlier and politically could not afford the humiliation of another correction or more confusion. A month later, the chief health officer signed new public health orders to mandate vaccines in non-essential retail settings. It did not go down well in locked-down Victoria.

Legacy

Andrews had always anticipated stepping down before the 2022 election. Having seen the unexpected downfall of the Brumby government and the spectacular implosion of the federal Labor government, Andrews assumed – based purely on the way modern politics works – he would not have been re-elected for a third term.

But after leading Labor to its resounding victory in 2018, he realised he could win a third term and see himself in bronze alongside other long-serving premiers outside Parliament’s Treasury Place. And then COVID-19 hit, battering his and his government’s reputation, and he recognised that he needed to restore his reputation and redefine his legacy.

After his 2014 election win, the Victorian premier had crashed and burned through office, unleashing a not-so-quiet revolution: from trains, roads and schools to an adventurous social reform agenda that became a blueprint for progressive politics across the country. But many inside the Labor movement privately acknowledge that it is Andrews’ handling of the pandemic that will define his time in office.

Until the highly virulent Omicron strain of COVID-19 ripped through Australia around Christmas 2021, Victoria was the nation’s pariah. No child in any other state or territory missed as many school days as all schoolchildren had in Dan’s Victoria. Melbourne was among the world’s longest locked-down cities. The city’s population declined more than that of any other Australian capital. And, most damningly, by April 2022, Victorians had lost more residents to COVID-19 than the rest of the country, largely as a result of the second wave that followed leaks in hotel quarantine.

And yet Andrews remained stubbornly popular, despite more than two tumultuous pandemic years. In that time, he also lost four ministers to branch stacking, which was the subject of an anti-corruption inquiry; he lost another minister and two departmental secretaries to the bungling of hotel quarantine; the infrastructure program was facing cost blowouts and delays; and the state’s finances were deep in debt and deficit. To outsiders, Andrews’ popularity was hard to understand.

When Victorians exited their sixth lockdown in late 2021 – just before the Omicron surge – Newspoll reported a 58-42-point lead for Labor on two-party-preferred terms. One of the most telling numbers related to the question on Andrews’ performance: 56 per cent surveyed said they were satisfied with his performance, 42 per cent said they were dissatisfied, and only 2 per cent did not have a view one way or the other. People either loved him or hated him. Only rarely did they have no opinion about him.

What explains Andrews’ political resilience? “Victorians might not agree with all aspects of [the Andrews government’s] activity,” politics professor Paul Strangio wrote for The Age, “but they appear to have credited the Andrews government for the fact that it is doing things with power. The extensive legacy that it is building stands in contrast with the minimalist governing style of the federal Coalition government. Indeed, a further factor buttressing Andrews’ popularity is that he provides a counterpoint to Scott Morrison’s inconsequential leadership.”

The other element to the Andrews government’s resilience is the premier himself. “He is an intriguing and potent combination of political hard man and purposeful reformer,” Strangio argued. “Andrews is the first larger-than-life leader of this state since Jeff Kennett.”

Shortly after the 2018 South Australian election, when the Liberals ended the 16-year reign of the Labor government, Peter Malinauskas was elected as the new Labor opposition leader. The grandson of Hungarian and Lithuanian refugees who moved to Adelaide to open a fish and chip shop, Malinauskas looked 700 kilometres east for advice – to a Labor leader who had consigned the Liberals to being a one-term government.

“If health becomes a problem, go and reconnect with the nurses’ union,” Andrews told Malinauskas when they met in 2018. “Find your three crisis issues and make it all about that. Don’t admit where you got it wrong and do the mea culpa thing. It feels good today, but they will just beat you over the head with it.”

It was sound political advice, and on March 21, 2022 Peter Malinauskas became the first opposition leader to unseat an incumbent state or territory government during the COVID-19 pandemic. Andrews’ words were those of a man with incredible political antennae, but also with a worrying streak of arrogance. They epitomised the Victorian premier’s leadership style: focused, determined, defiant and unrepentant.

In times of crisis, the Labor leader has always acted as though there’s nothing to see. And then, when things get really tough, he reverts to his roots as a factional brawler: fierce and unforgiving.

These defining qualities of Andrews, who has always balanced ideology with an acute sense of what the mainstream will tolerate, may yet be the Achilles heel that enables the fall of his government. Whether or not Andrews, who was on his way to becoming Victoria’s most significant premier this century, will actually leave a long-lasting legacy remains to be seen, but his friends and foes both agree that he has been a leader for the times.

This is an edited extract from Daniel Andrews by Sumeyya Ilanbey, RRP $32.99, published by Allen & Unwin, out 30 August, 2022.

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