Great opinion piece from Francis Galbally in today's Australian.
Victorians deserve new leadership and fresh eyes.
At his press conference on October 14, the Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, admonished a truck driver for not telling the truth and then said: “You don’t get into trouble if you tell the full story.”
Andrews then went off on a tirade in which he tried to explain the extent of trouble Victorians will get into if they do not tell the whole story to Health Department authorities.
He lectured Victorians about the virtue of telling the truth, being honest and more. He said if you tell the truth to the authorities you will not get into trouble.
Who hasn’t told the whole story about the fiasco which has caused Melburnians to be locked up for months? Dan Andrews.
He forgot. He didn’t know. Come on! Does anybody believe he didn’t know who made the fateful decision that has cost hundreds of lives, ruined businesses and caused massive mental health problems for more than a million Victorians.
Andrews will undoubtedly get into trouble. He will rue these words.
He has appeared day by day before the media. His advisers must think this is some show of strength and leadership. But the reality is the longer he does these appearances, the more Victorians realise how hypocritical he is, how contradictory the rules are and how there is no proper planning for getting Victorians out of lockdown and living with COVID-19.
His appearances increasingly demonstrate an incompetent person who can read out numbers and statistics and lecture us on many things, including being truthful and telling the whole story.
Andrews is responsible for the biggest fiasco the state of Victoria has ever seen.
He has also shown that he leads the worst government the state of Victoria has ever seen.
And now with the words “You don’t get into trouble if you tell the full story”, he will go down in history as the most hypocritical leader the state has ever seen.
I have said many times that it beggars belief that Andrews thinks Victorians believe him. But more importantly, his comments this week will undermine any leadership and authority.
Why would anybody listen to Andrews? He has lost the trust of Victorians, and the terrible corollary is that the bureaucrats charged with implementing government policy have also lost the trust of Victorians.
They have shown that their allegiance has not been to the Victorian public but to their political masters.
The resignation of Chris Eccles has demonstrated that the very top ranks of the Victorian bureaucracy has shown a lack of credibility and competence.
Dan Andrews has demonstrated clearly the lack of competence with the hotel quarantine fiasco, and he is now showing through his own words his own lack of integrity.
Dan must go, in disgrace and quickly. If the Labor caucus continues to back him, the result may be disastrous. Eventually there will be massive civil disobedience.
We cannot afford this. New leadership and a whole new approach to dealing with this coronavirus pandemic needs to be set in place.
This means fresh eyes at how we are dealing with the pandemic and the rules. New experts need to be brought in to consider the data.
Victorians deserve new leadership and fresh eyes.
Francis Galbally is a Melbourne businessman and company director. As a lawyer, he recovered more than $1bn in investor funds lost following corporate collapses in 1990 when Victoria’s Labor premier John Cain was in power.
