Andrews Leaves a Winner

While many politically right-of-centre Australians would be cheering the resignation of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, the bloke leaves as a winner.

He won three elections and ran Victoria with an iron fist while misusing buckets of taxpayers money.

His government was mired in corruption scandals and linked to the largest number of COVID deaths in Australia. He ran Victoria into record debt while imposing new and outrageous taxes targeting his non-supporters.

On top of that, Andrews pursued a radical social agenda on euthanasia, abortion and drug use.

It's incredible to think he was largely untouched by Victoria's Liberal opposition despite the target-rich environment.

That's why he is a winner.

He leaves on his terms, is off the hook on his COVID accountability and, while leaving Victoria in a parlous state, he has a taxpayer funded statue in his honour.

It says a lot about politics and the media in Victoria that he leaves virtually unscathed.

The opposition didn't lay a glove on Andrews. He suffered more damage from internal Labor foes than his political opponents.

As I have said before, where the adversarial politics of accountability fails, it falls to the media to do their job of exposing bad actions and policies.

Unfortunately the media in Victoria failed too.

They repeatedly failed to ask the hard questions during Andrew's rein and were particularly sycophantic during the COVID pandemic.

So while Andrews emerges a winner, we are all losers as a result.

The template for authoritarian politics is now set. Politicians have learned that they can get away with almost anything as long as they keep the media on side.

They act as the gatekeepers to shaping public opinion and their omissions are even more effective than their exposes.

Where the mainstream media fails, the independent media often succeeds.

However, these revelations are usually dismissed as conspiracy theories or misinformation by those with a vested interest in outcome.

We've seen that with propaganda outlets like their ABC, the biased fact-checkers and the tech titans.

Thanks to Senator Alex Antic and his Freedom of Information requests, we also know that government has a role in censoring content they deem inappropriate.

So the two most untrustworthy public voices - politicians and a biased media - are trying to close down access to the truth through alternative outlets.

That only makes those outlets even more important.