Former Labor premier of Victoria, John Cain, famously said, “We may have hired a few nongs, but we weren’t crooks”. As Victorians watched their state economy collapse around them, they might have questioned Cain’s protestation, but he was at least right that he wasn’t a crook. Even trenchant critic Derryn Hinch admitted that Cain was “a fundamentally decent man”.
Three decades later, the current Labor premier cannot plausibly make the same claim. But he would, of course — and with a straight face.
Dodgy Labor Party politicking and fiscal vandalism are the enduring hallmarks of Daniel Andrews’ leftist government which, in just six months, will seek voter support for a third term in office.
Andrews and Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas are boastfully hawking a budget which will borrow billions more on top of the state’s already-mountainous debt, to “fix” problems which are all of their own making. It’s like taking out a loan to buy a new car, willfully trashing it, then taking out another loan to fix it.
Even the Reserve Bank of Australia has taken the highly unusual step of criticising the Victorian Government, saying rather than simply borrowing more money (thereby fuelling inflationary pressures), the state should be starting the process of paying down its whopping $167 billion dollar debt. Instead, Andrews has borrowed billions more, leaving the repayment problem to others in the decades ahead.
Also capturing attention is Victoria’s truly astounding public sector wages bill – topping $37 billion a year – made worse by Pallas admitting that the 1.5 per cent public sector wage cap would be lifted just four months after it was implemented.
It must also be borne in mind that Victoria’s debt would be exponentially higher if the Commonwealth hadn’t agreed to essentially carry the cost of the Premier’s catastrophic Covid policies.
But Andrews’ most barefaced con is promising to “fix” the health system which has collapsed under his personal stewardship. Andrews has been premier, health minister or Parliamentary Secretary for Health for fifteen of the 20 years since 2002.
No single person has had a greater opportunity than he has to deliver reform to the public health sector and no single person has more comprehensively failed to do so.
Now, like some latter-day Svengali, he wants us to thank him for more false promises on meeting expectations for better public health infrastructure and better public hospitals. The public health system here was broken well in advance of Covid. The virus sent the system over the cliff without ropes or safety nets. Andrews must carry full accountability for this disgrace […] Andrews and Pallas have trashed Victoria’s finances and consigned generations of debt repayments to people not yet even able to vote.
How has this incompetent wrecking-ball managed to stay floating at the top for so long? Because if there’s one thing Andrews is good at — in fact, the only thing he’s good at — it’s seizing and wielding power. It’s no coincidence that one of the iconic images of the premier is his smirking mug in Tiananmen Square, with Mao looking on from the distance, phoning home to giddily pass on the news that he had just signed on to Xi Xinping’s BRI.
Andrews is a power-seeker in the same mould as the Great Helmsman.
Daniel Andrews has devoted his entire adult life to the Labor cause. It’s all he knows.
Andrews appears to be mistrustful of anyone not of his tribe. He either ignores opponents or treats the Parliament as a side-show. Two years ago, one of Australia’s keenest national political observers (former federal director of the Liberal Party Brian Loughnane) said this:
‘Andrews ignores Parliament and limits the opportunities for the opposition to hold him, or his ministers, to account. He does not engage with the opposition or acknowledge any criticism from them. He dominates his party, caucus and ministry, expecting them to toe-the-line while otherwise ignoring them.’
Spectator Australia
Victorians should at least be grateful that the Red Shirts were at least not the Red Guards, and that Australia’s constitutions forbids Andrews from raising his own Victorian Liberation Army.
And Tommy Bent can take posthumous solace that he’ll no longer be remembered as Victoria’s most corrupt premier.