Victoria, it’s time to end the cult of Andrews. By Peta Credlin.
The reason the Daniel Andrews government is a national story is because Victorian Labor has become the template for Labor governments everywhere. And the reason the imminent Victorian election matters to all of us is because the most inept and ethically challenged government this country has seen is seeking electoral vindication. …
What struck me most putting together this documentary was the number of good and decent Labor people who reached out to me and said “this man must go”.
The bravest of them all was a former Andrews government minister who reached out to me wanting to speak up about her treatment by the Premier. “What he will do,” said the ex-minister, “is mark somebody out who has disagreed with him … and he will step in, throw the first punch … and then stand back. And that’s the signal for everyone else to come in and finish the job. He says he’s a champion for women … but he treats women appallingly behind closed doors. And if you’re down, he’ll kick you to keep you down.” …
There is no doubt that Andrews is the most domineering premier Australia has seen in decades. …
The modern bureaucratic style:
As virtual health dictator for the duration of the pandemic, Andrews turned Melbourne into the world’s most locked-down city. …
The Premier’s decision to reject help from the army and instead to put dodgy private security guards in charge of hotel quarantine was linked to the deaths of 801 people. There was an inquiry, costing $15m, including $8m on ministers’ legal fees, yet no one could remember who made that fateful decision; and somehow, that’s the end of it.
But that’s par for the course in Victoria where nothing is ever the government’s fault. When WorkSafe Victoria, headed up by a former Labor staffer, investigated the 801 deaths under the state’s powerful industrial manslaughter laws, it concluded that no one individual was to blame, just a faceless Victorian Health Department instead. The Lawyer X royal commission found a gross miscarriage of justice but no one in authority has been charged, let alone lost their job.
Only months ago, the anti-corruption watchdog, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, found that serious abuse of taxpayer funds was endemic in Victorian Labor, but likewise no one was personally to blame, certainly not the Premier, even though he’d run the party for the past dozen years. And the Premier himself has been questioned in four, maybe five, corruption inquiries, yet — unlike the questioning of his factional opponents on the ALP Right — it’s never been open to the media. …
Only in Victoria could the Premier spend $1m from taxpayers to promote himself on social media and bypass, for the most part, journalists’ questions and scrutiny.
Enabled by a corrupted media and the left.
