It’s been quite the couple of days for the IStandWithDan crowd. If you thought the sight of thousands of North Koreans ecstatically singing, His brilliant ideals represent our goals, the Brilliant Commander’s will is the people’s victory, was the most robotic display of mass indoctrination you’ve ever seen, you’ve clearly never checked in on Dan Fan Twitter.
The shock announcement of the last-minute cancellation of Victoria’s hosting the Commonwealth Games has whipped them into an orgiastic frenzy of denial of everything they’ve said before.
This is the standard in Danistan, of course. Orwell’s Ingsoc could only dream of the sort of mass mind control Dictator Dan exerts. Within minutes of the Games announcement, the word was out: “Danistan has always been at war with the Commonwealth Games. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war.”
Elsewhere, though, even some of the Party loyalists are beginning to notice that two and two really does make four. This, from the normally slavish ABC:
A global embarrassment. A complete humiliation. A betrayal of regional Victorians.
These are just some of the summaries about Premier Daniel Andrews‘s decision to scrap the 2026 Commonwealth Games in regional Victoria.
ABC Australia
It’s easy to think that the furore over the cancellation is a bigger and more irrelevant sideshow than the Games themselves, and that Andrews’ decision is mere fiscal prudence. But if you really think that, you’re either a Dan cultist, or know little about Victorian politics.
In reality, the cancellation is a stunning, tacit admission of just how broken Victoria really is. North Korea may not be able to afford bread, but they sure can put on the circuses. Danistan can’t even afford the circuses any more.
Victoria is drowning in debt. The Games are, if nothing else, big business. The last-minute cancellation is merely firming the suspicion of other big investors that Victoria is just not a safe place to do business. After all, Andrews has form, here: his very first act as premier was to summarily cancel a much-needed freeway project, costing the Victorian budget over a billion dollars for nothing.
A government that makes a big, specific commitment, involving lots of other folks’ time and money, and lots of specific contracts, and then has to pull out because it can’t afford it – that’s almost the definition of one variety of sovereign risk. That’s Victoria under Dan Andrews […]
The cancellation of the Commonwealth Games in Victoria in 2026 certainly damages the state’s self-image as the Mecca of sport, and big sporting events. But much more importantly, it damages the state’s international financial reputation.
The Australian
Money-wise, the Games cancellation is bargain-basement stuff for Victorian taxpayers: the compensation bill to the Commonwealth Games Federation is likely to at least be in the tens of millions, although some sources are claiming a cost of at least $1 billion. Reputationally, though, the damage is incalculable. Will any other big-ticket event be willing to risk signing contracts with Victoria in the near future?
The damage is also immense for Andrews himself. Despite the slavish adoration of his online army, Andrews’ reputation is growing as a shambolic micro-manager prone to making disastrously wrong snap judgements and lying heroically to dig himself out of them. Case in point: the hotel quarantine disaster which saw Victoria damned with easily the worst Covid outcomes in Australia — worse than all the other states combined — and yet, for which no one has ever taken responsibility.
Questions are already being asked about the excuse for cancelling the Games: the supposed cost overrun.
Even the initial cost of $2.6 billion was nearly double what the most recent Games have cost elsewhere. Birmingham in 2022 even came in under budget. Even with the ridiculously obvious pork-barreling exercise of staging the Games in temporary facilities in regional areas (which just happen to be marginal electorates), the claimed blowout to $7-9 billion is coming under intense scrutiny. Commonwealth Games Australia chief executive Craig Phillips calls the claimed costs overrun “a gross exaggeration”. As one journalist asked, at Andrews’ press conference, “who can’t count?”.
“This is because Victoria is broke. We are a failed state and it’s because of the incompetence of this government,” [Shadow Minister for Finance Jane Hume] said.
“In any other state somebody would resign. Unfortunately, Dan Andrews is going to say, “not my fault, not my problem”, we’re just going to have to deal with this. It’s never Daniel Andrews’ fault.”
The Australian
In any other state, Andrews would have resigned after the CFA scandal. Or the Red Shirts scandal. Or SlugGate. Or the hotel quarantine disaster. Or the multiple corruption investigations.
But it’s not any other state: it’s Victoria. Where no one is ever held accountable.
Least of all the Dear Leader.