Daniel Andrews resignation was greeted with unbounded joy by most Victorians. I cannot recall any defeated leader receiving the rapturopus approval on his/her demise. Not even Whitlam attracted so much vitriol and relief from the populace at large. The public demonstrations at Parliament House were unprecedented.
The more important question is what happens next?
Daniel Andrews, Labour Party premier of Victoria since December, 2014 Subsequently acquired a new title now known as “Public Enemy Number 1”. I doubt that his resignation will soften that label. He is still regarded as that even in retirement.
Andrews presided over the worst national crisis ever to hit our country since the threat of Japanese invasion in 1942. His ineptitude in handling the COVID-19 crisis led to calls from many quarters for his resignation or forced replacement, failing which, it was assumed that it would only be a matter of time and tide until his inevitable defeat in the elections of 2022. It didn 't happen because the alternative prospect was even worse.
Andrews’ career has been one of total involvement in government in one form or another. He has never held a job in the real world since he graduated from Monash University. He became leader of the Opposition during the reign of Ted Baillieu in 2010. Baillieu was succeeded by Dennis Napthine who Andrews defeated in the 2014 election.
At that time there was raging controversy over the construction of what was known as the East/West link, an extension of the Eastern Freeway through suburban Collingwood and Carlton to link up with the metropolitan freeway network. This proposal was fiercely opposed by two local councils that were not directly affected by the plan but both of which were heavily dominated by Greens councillors. They undertook mass disruption to drilling activities along the planned route and instigated legal action in the Supreme Court to stop the project. Andrews campaigned on a platform that he would cancel the contracts if elected on the basis that the contracts were legally invalid and would not expose the government to compensation for breach of contract.
Andrews won the election and cancelled the contracts. However his claims of no cost to the government were false and his government paid out over $1 billion in compensation to the contracted parties. His comment was that it was worth it. It probably was to him because it secured the support of the Greens preferences at the election.
His first task as premier was to resolve a long running dispute with the ambulance paramedics. He just gave them what they wanted.Soon afterwards he became embroiled in another furore when he announced drastic changes to the Country Fire Authority, the leading and highly regarded firefighting organisation outside the metropolitan area staffed predominantly by volunteers. The United Fire Fighters Union through its national secretary, had given strong support on and leading up to polling day in the 2014 election. These moves were to reward the union for it’s support by substantially replacing the non-unionised volunteers with paid professional fire fighters who were union members. At the same time he gave substantial benefits to the union to the point where the senior management of the CFA resigned en masse along with one of Andrews own ministers who was also strongly opposed to what he was doing.
Jacqui Lambie said in parliament a few days ago that there was a general reduction on the level of public volunteering. I do not accept that this is so but if I am wrong I do not accept that it is the resaon for the shortage of fire fighting crews in Victoria. The revolt against the unionisation was terminal. Only this week we have had unseasonal severe bushfires in East Gippsland with a shortage of crews and equipment on the ground and summer has not yet arrived.
This made no impact on Andrews. The disaffected CFA membership vowed to mount a campaign to defeat him at the next state election but their efforts came to nothing. He was re-elected in 2018. In the meantime however the furore over the CFA dispute slopped over into the 2016 Federal election and the federal Labour Party accused Andrews of being the reason that it was defeated.
None of this had the slightest impact on Andrews and he continued to reorganise both the CFA and Metropolitan Fire Brigade into a new organisation, the blueprint of which was drawn up by the UFU and its national secretary Peter Marshall.
The CFA dispute was followed by a series of controversial decisions including the privatisation of the Port of Melbourne, the referral of misuse in public office of government staff by the Labour Party in the 2014 elections to the Ombudsman of which the finding was guilty and resulted in payment of a small sum by the party to recompense the public purse.
Then followed his euthanasia bill that was eventually passed by a conscience vote by a tight margin and the first foray into China with visits by his entire cabinet which ended in his second term with the signing of the Belt and Road agreement with the CCP.
One might ask why, in the face of these controversies, did he succeed in 2018.
The answer is twofold. One is his gigantic programme of infrastructure construction the first of which was a programme to abolish all level crossings in Melbourne. There were about 100 of them and they were probably the biggest single cause of traffic congestion. The former Liberal governments were doing this at a snail’s pace; enough to keep the voters quiet. Andrews programme has been hailed an outstanding success.
The second factor in the 2018 win was the lack of any opposition. Ted Baillieu was without doubt the most ineffective and hopeless politician ever to be inflicted on the public. He did absolutely nothing. Late in his term he resigned in favour of Dennis Napthine who was not much better but in his defence one must say that he was left so far behind by Baillieu that he had little time to catch up. His chance was to launch the East/West Link but he muffed it.
The Liberal Party was so bad that the landslide to Andrews in 2018 was no surprise. The Liberal Party in Victoria is run like a private club. The chosen few, including the likes of Baillieu, still dominated. At the 2018 election their leader was a bug-eyed nobody named Guy and even up to polling day many people did not even know who he was. He was replaced by an equally inconsequential nobody by the name of Michael O’Brian, an acerbic little man with no personality and a face like a sour lemon. Guy subsequently replaced O'Brien and was defeated again by a similar large margin.
In 2020 we had the bushfire crisis followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These events should have been mana from heaven for an opposition but there was silence The massive discontent over Andrews' handling of the coronavirus, if one studies the map, shows that the worst affected areas were all in Labour’s heartland. The swinging seats in outer Melbourne and the regional centres of Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong which have been traditionally held by Labour, recorded the lowest levels of infection. By the time 2022 came around the bushfires had already been forgotten.
Andrews’ failures in the covid crisis and the calls for his downfall came predominantly from interstate and had no impact on Victorian elections at all. It seems like interstate observers could see what Victorians could not.
The other factor was that if Andrews were to go who would replace him. The leading members of his cabinet were very unacceptable to voters in swinging seats.
Following from his cancellation of the East/West Link project, Daniel Andrews had to come up with an alternative. His pig headedness came to the fore with his determination to ensure that this project never succeeds.
Early in his role as PM, Scott Morrison recognised how vital this project was to the solution of Melbourne’s ever growing traffic problems and offered Andrews that the Commonwealth would pay for the tunnel construction if Andrews passed the necessary legislation to compulsorily acquire the properties that lay in its path. Most of these had already been acquired or were in the process of being acquired, by the Napthine Liberal government.
Andrews’ response was to reject Morrison’s offer and promptly set about selling off those properties that had previously been acquired.
His immediate counter move to salve the public outcry over the contract cancellation was to announce the construction of the Westgate Tunnel project. This tunnel, according to Andrews was far more vital for the wellbeing of Melbourne’s citizens than the East/West Link. One cannot help the feelings of derision when it is noted that the East/West Link was to serve suburbs in what were traditionally Liberal seats whereas the Westgate Tunnel was in the centre of Labour heartland.
Neither depended on the other and both could be described as necessary components of an integrated freeway network
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The purpose of the Westgate Tunnel is twofold. One is to divert heavy truck traffic from the industrial west of Melbourne to the port. Curfews were already in place to restrict this traffic during sleeping hours and weekends from travelling through inner suburban streets. It caused significant disruption to industrial activity. The other is to ease the volume of traffic on the Westgate Bridge which has reached capacity
The contract was let to a consortium for a cost of $6.7 billion, now blown out to $13 billion.
The project involved the construction of two tunnels under the Maribyrnong River directly into the Port of Melbourne by using huge tunnel boring machines. Construction started in 2018 and it took some 6 months to construct the operations base and assemble the boring machines. Work proceeded until the accumulation of spoil from the tunnelling was found to contain noxious chemicals and the disposal then had to conform to EPA standards and strenuous objections from residents in areas where it was intended to dump the spoil. The land which the consortium had earmarked as a dumping ground was not suitable and alternatives had to be found. These involved extra costs for the consortium which took the view that as the soil contamination was a factor that should have been known to the government and the EPA compliance was imposed by government regulations the government should pay the extra cost. The government refused stating that it was up to the contractor to work something out. A Mexican standoff ensued and the contractor stopped work resulting in 300+ workers being laid off.
Work proceeds with the ancillary projects, which are extensive, but the dispute over the disposal of 1.5 million cubic metres of spoil remained unresolved for a long time and the project is now 3 years overdue for completion.
The second string to Andrews’ bow to solve the East/West Link debacle was to announce the North/East Link. This was a $16 billion project that will link the Eastern Freeway to the ring road system that traverses Melbourne’s north and west. It will complete the link as intended for the East/West Link by a very round about route. Cost estimates now run to $23 billion. These two projects are costing, so far, $39 billion to solve a problem that was costed at $8 billion and that the Federal government had offered to pay for anyway.
The North East Link will not however ease the congestion at the end of the Eastern Freeway for traffic heading to the CBD. The Eastern Freeway is to be widened to 10 lanes but will still result in a dead end. The official line is that the traffic diverted to the North East link will reduce the volume on the Eastern Freeway and that will relieve the congestion at the dead end in Collingwood. This is flawed thinking because traffic heading to the CBD and beyond will get no benefit. The main beneficiaries will be people travelling to Tullamarine Airport and industrial traffic heading to the northern suburbs.
This project has been strenuously resisted by local councils in the affected areas. It will involve the loss of considerable parklands and playing fields, industrial and residential areas together with major intrusions into areas regarded as safe Liberal heartland. There has been talk of mounting legal challenges to this project by some affected councils but as time goes on I believe they will come to nothing. It is too late and the work is too far advanced.
Construction was due to start in 2021 and finish in 2027. Some preliminary peripheral work has already started along with property acquisitions.
Of all the grief and pain Andrews has inflicted on Victorians nothing matches that which emerges from his destruction of the brown coal generating industry in the LaTrobe Valley. It affects every Victorian.
Andrews is a disciple of the climate change fraud. During the reign of the Kennett government from 1992 to 1999 the State Electricity Commission, a government entity that operated the LaTrobe Valley brown coal deposits and power stations, was dismantled and the power stations sold off to foreign private enterprises to pay off debts incurred by the previous Labour governments of Joan Kirner and John Cain Snr. The coal fields were retained by the government. When Andrews came to power he embarked on a programme to close down the coal fired power stations that produced all of Victoria’s domestic electricity needs and also fed the national grid. His rationale was the emissions of carbon dioxide.
He raised the amount of royalty that the power generators had to pay for the coal they extracted to a point where they became unprofitable and the Hazelwood station was closed down. The remaining generators still provide the bulk of the base load power but the compensating rise in renewable energy generation has pushed domestic power prices to stratospheric levels. The aluminium smelter at Point Henry, near Geelong was closed. The Portland aluminium smelter is alive through government subsidies but is expected to close next year. In addition to that he also banned the on-shore exploration for natural gas of which Victoria has copious quantities.
This policy has recently been overturned by agreement with the Federal government.
These are just the major catastrophes of the Andrews government. Other minor skirmishes occurred almost daily. For example, we did not have a gang problem in Victoria according to Andrews and his politicised police chief yet home invasions are no longer news, they are so common.
Victorians managed to survive the ravages of the Cain/Kirner governments. Hopefully we can survive Andrews as well but I am not holding my breath. His legacy will be a ball,and chain around our necks for many years to come.
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