Daniel Andrews Resigns as Premier of Victoria

BRIAN: After 9 years in office as Premier of Victoria, Australia, Daniel Andrews has announced his immediate resignation, despite his election promise to serve his 3rd term in full – handing the reins of power over to his handpicked deputy and fellow socialist faction member Jacinta Allan. When asked about the decision, Andrews gave a typical teflon coated response from the man many assumed would continue to rule over Victoria for all of eternity.

Heart-broken social media shills, including PRGuy and DanFanGirl, momentarily facing the prospect of being forced to find some meaning in their lives, before quickly pivoting to 24/7 advocacy of Labor’s ‘Voice’ referendum. Andrews was Labor’s longest serving Victorian premier, and his departure begs the question – who could possibly want to fill his shoes? I certainly wouldn’t want to be the sock-puppet to do that, as Victoria facing a looming financial crisis.

But at least none of us will have to sit through another Commonwealth Games – which comes as a relief to INN’s Sport reporter Joe Sockic, who put together the following tribute highlighting Dan’s greatest moments…

JOE: Hi. I’m INN Sport Reporter Joe Sockic, and I’m thrilled to be here to pay tribute to the one and only Daniel Michael Andrews. If politics were a sport, I think it’d be Boxing – and Dan would be a prized-fighter – high stakes, tough to watch, heaps of fun when you have weak opposition, and a little bit dodgy behind the scenes. So join me as I take a look back at some of the greatest knock-out moments from Dan Andrews’ long, LONG political career… [CUE: Music]

A Man of the People – On Social Media: Dan was a man of the people – as long as you were a digital person, or invited to his controlled press conferences. He transitioned Victorian political discourse from outdated methods like public speaking and interviews, into the age of social media, where Dan’s 1.5 million followers – more than every other state premier combined – received his carefully crafted media releases daily, and used the #IStandWithDan to pile on any opposing voices and call them far-right extremists INNformation. 

A Man of Promises: Dan kicked off his premiership by spending $1.1 billion on NOT building the previous government’s infrastructure projects, promising better, more expensive ones, Melbourne’s Airport Rail link first proposed in 1965. Unfortunately, that one didn’t happen, but he did start a Suburban Rail Loop in the wealthy Eastern suburbs that might even link to the airport and west someday. Level train crossings were removed en masse, for just 8.3 billion dollars. Luckily Dan sold the Port of Melbourne to the Chinese which helped pay for it. He promised to increase affordable housing and decrease taxation and absolutely delivered, just the wrong way around. (CHART), and as a former health minister, he promised better ambulance times and 4000 ICU beds during Covid. Unfortunately, those ones didn’t happen. Probably his former health minister’s fault who he sacked when he couldn’t remember who put cheap security in charge of hotel quarantine which led to an outbreak that killed 700 people. 

A Man of Power: Dan was a man of power. When state of emergency powers were about to expire, he changed the law, even after  he needed to keep it after  After chang and promised to control power He promised to Bring back state owned electricity through the nostalgic SEC that his opposition party privatised in 1994, stating he’d “replace offshore profits with offshore wind” – and boy was that wind blowing hard, as he immediately opened the proposal to off-shore investment before it stalling completely, along with the 59,000 jobs it was supposed to create. 

A Man of the Commonwealth: And then there was his big re-re-election promise to bring the 2026 Commonwealth Games to rural Victoria, for the bargain price of just 2.6billion dollars – only a billion dollars more than Briminhan, England spent in 2022. And even though Birmingham, the largest local government in Europe, went bankrupt shortly after the event, Dan was all in, getting the money from taxpayers, riding the excitement to an election win, and then calling another press conference and cancelled the games, giving the international organising committee 8 hours notice. He had no choice of course, claiming the budget had blown out to 7 or more billion dollars – and then just turned around and walked away. 

A Man of the Pandemic: Dan kept Victorians safe during the pandemic, despite a higher death count than anywhere else in Australia, by simply removing their freedom and right to work, in the 262 day, longest and often harshest lockdown on planet earth, including extended school and business closures, localised hotspot lockdowns, curfews, statewide shutdowns and border closures, night-time curfews, restrictions on visiting dying relatives and attending funerals, terminating teachers who didn’t comply with medical mandates 2 weeks before lifting the mandates. The state Ombudsman criticised his decision to lockdown 9 public housing towers with little notice, but what would she know? Andrews was so busy, he was fined twice for not wearing a face mask in public, while he was walking to press conferences to tell people to wear face masks. Dan recorded a 120-day press conference streak during Covid, where he controlled every aspect of the global pandemic – his North Face jacket and intense power stare used to implemented an tinker with sweeping changes to the lives of 6.7million people daily, while he mastered the art of the sanctimonious retort (VID).

A Man of his Word: There were some difficult times. In 2013, Dan and his wife were struck by a dangerous push-bike riding kid t-boned their large SUV causing horrific inconvenience to both of them – and some life threatening injuries to the kid. Luckily, police forgot to perform their mandatory duty of breath testing the participants at the scene. Despite Andrews stating that their stationary car had just started moving before the bike hit, somehow an ambulance report suggested their car had in fact ploughed into the bike rider at up to 60 kms an hour. But the lack of remorse from the couple suggests this may have been inaccurate. Andrews was in the wars again in early 2021 when he ‘broke his back’ falling on some wet stairs at a holiday residence in Sorrento. He spent 111 days recovering from his injuries, as evidenced by this single picture which he released.

A Man with a Plan – In China: Dan’s big buld comes with a big price tag, but they say you gotta spend money to make money, and the banks will be making $8 billion a year in interest on the record $171 billion dollar Victoria debt racked up under the Andrews Regime – expected to blow out to $239billion by 2026. Dan did everything he could to keep money coming in, even bypassing Federal advice and secretly signing a memorandum of understanding with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. If not for those meddling liberals that vetoed the deal, who know what kind of riches and offshore ownership could have been happening in Victoria? Decisions like these don’t come easy. Thats why And Victorian parliament passes a law allowing the formation of independent authority to help the state government negotiate treaties with Victoria’s First Nations peoples.   

A Man with a Scandal – or two: While he was premier. Dan Andrews’ salary increased to $441,000 – the highest in the country – and he earned every cent considering the stress of being involved in 5 separate IBAC anti-corruption hearings. But Andrews was a master of plausible deniability, and while his own ministers were found guilty of breaching parliamentary codes of conduct, misusing public funds for branch stacking operations, spending $388,000 of public funds to pay electoral officers to wear Labor-branded red-shirts in marginal seats, failure to conduct adequate tender processes and improper influence in the awarding of contracts related to land sales, fire unions, health, education… [Joe – is the still a tribute report?] Yeah, yeah, I’m almost done… Anyway, despite a 12 month police investigation and the state Ombudsman’s report describing his government’s conduct as “absolutely disgraceful” and “a catalogue of unethical and inappropriate behaviour”, Dan Andrews wasn’t charged and, in typical style, brushed off the findings as ‘educational’. So on he went until the day he resigned – a pudgy geeky career politician who broke the state record for longest serving Labor premier while being described by his own colleagues as a ruthless, relentless, arrogant bully.

JOE: By-golly what a champion. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve been knocked out after watching that! You gotta admire a bloke who can take all those punches and still come out on top. He bows out as a legend of the sport of politics, and will be one tough act to follow. But I wonder if retirement will make him consider the damage he’s done through his carreer career? Haha, what am I thinking! Of course he won’t! Well, I hope you’ve had as much fun as I have, and until next time, I’ve been Joe Sockic, and you’ve been watching my tribute to Dan ‘the teflon-coated man’ Andrews. Bye for now. 

SANDY: Well, that was an interesting tribute there… You don’t really think Joe is one of those cookers do you?

BRIAN: No, I thought it fairly balanced? I wasn’t really listening

SANDY: At least those awful level crossings were removed 

BRIAN: Yup, those level crossings were removed…

SANDY: I did hate those level crossings

BRIAN: Yup.

SANDY: And weren’t they dangerous?

BRIAN: The Level Crossings?

SANDY: Yeah.

BRIAN: Umm, yes. Great to see them removed. Good work.