So let me get this right. In awarding Daniel Andrews the Companion of the Order of Australia, this is what the Federal Labor government considers “eminent service to the people and parliament of Victoria, to public health, to policy and regulatory reform, and to infrastructure development”:
Hotel Quarantine: Daniel Andrew’s COVID policy directly led to the death of 700 Victorians and plunged Victoria into long, ruinous lockdowns. A policy that no one in his Labor government could remember anything about during a public inquiry.
Big Build: A government program so inept that it is costing Victorians $27 billion dollars to build a 10-km road; and has saddled Victoria with shocking debt of $156.2 billion and rising. Money that it is now taken out of hospital funding, schools funding and social services like mental health support and counselling.
Reduction of private enterprise: Victoria was the only state in Australia to see the total number of registered businesses reduce last year – what a feat!
Commonwealth Games: The government bid, won and then withdrew from hosting the Commonwealth Games. The only thing Victorians are left with is a bill of more than $589 million (and growing) as penalty for the contract reneged.
Politicisation of the public service: Here is what the Victorian Ombudsman had to say about Daniel Andrews’ and Jacinta Allan’s treatment of the public service. When speaking to the public servants, “Two sentiments stood out – concern and fear. Concern about what people saw as the quickening corrosion of longstanding Westminster principles of responsible government. Fear that if they spoke up, if they were in any way identifiable as having done so, their careers would be finished.”
Terrorising its own population: A final feather in Daniel Andrews’ cap is that Victoria police working under his guidance handcuffed and arrested a pregnant woman with no criminal record in her home in front of her young children for the crime of putting a fairly mild social media post calling for a protest. (There were many ways to handle the situation, and the police decided on the harshest.)
Victorians today pay the highest fines, penalties and taxes and live with fast eroding rights, potholed roads, underfunded hospitals and public services, housing crisis, record debt, and sky rocketing energy prices. It must be Labor’s idea of Utopia – hence the honour.
