With the resignation of Dan Andrews, Victorians can once again go to coffee shops and cafe owners will undoubtedly be offering free coffee in celebration… Strangely the little bit of Sky News I watched didn’t even go to them, but chose to interview journalists about how they found the Premier combative and evasive as he stood there refusing to give them the answers that they were after, particularly during Covid lockdowns when he failed to acknowledge the fact that Gladys had been unfairly treated by the ABC when she was merely canonised when she should have been deified…
Of course, I have to admit that all those people who predicted that Dan Andrews would stand down were right, even if they got the timing wrong by something like two years. I know how frustrating it is when my wife won’t accept that when I say there’s no need to water the garden because it’s going to rain that I was right because it did rain… Ok, all the plants are dead because it’s three months after I predicted it, but I was basically correct, even if the timing was a little out.
All right, I should just stop and acknowledge that whatever else, Andrews did a lot right as Premier. Nobody’s perfect and during his time as leader, Victoria has done a whole range of things that I thought were too progressive for any government to risk. From assisted dying to safe injecting rooms to laws preventing protestors from harassing women seeking an abortion to attempting to improve public transport to… Well, there’s been a lot which is why he’s upset so many conservatives and pretend conservatives who like to feign outrage and complain about the fabric of society being destroyed while they demonstrate their commitment to family values by only having an affair and not breaking up the family.
Of course, there were a number of articles this morning about what a shocking job he’d done and how the voters were just idiots who didn’t know how oppressed they were. Phil Coorey who is best remembered for his article on how Gladys saved Australia wrote in this morning’s Financial Review that his government came “stone motherless last on every metric in terms of handling the pandemic”. Interesting that the paper he writes for was also critical of Mark McGowan for closing off his state and streeting the rest of Australia in every metric and lost very few people to Covid meaning that he can’t be accused of being stone motherless last. Surprisingly, Coorey was terribly impressed with Gladys in spite of the Ruby Princess, the untested chauffeur setting off a wave and various other things that one would have thought rivalled any alleged mistakes that Andrews made.
Credlin, Bolt and various other Murdoch commentators seemed to be genuinely aggrieved that Dan had managed to leave on his own terms, rather than being dragged out by the ugly mobs marching on the Victorian Parliament and strung up on the gallows that someone had erected.
Rachel Baxendale, journalist for The Australian, was on the ABC telling viewers that Andrews avoided scrutiny by ignoring the media. Strange that she should forget that, during the pandemic, Andrews fronted the cameras day after day, answering the questions that she managed to skillfully read from her phone without ever letting it slip that they were from a prominent Liberal.
How dare Andrews use social media and speak directly to the public, is the subtext of Baxendale’s complaint. It must be frustrating for these people who, in days gone by, would have been the gatekeepers of information and carefully filtered what we got to see and hear. Well, yes, they still try to do that but these days, you can also read what I have to say. And not just me, there are lots of other people who can blog, post, tweet… sorry X, or whatever takes their fancy. And, by and large, they’re unfiltered…
Which, of course, raises the obvious question: Does information filtered through a respected media that people just presume is telling the truth represent a bigger threat to democracy than unfiltered information from unverified sources that don’t follow any rules?
And, of course, that would be an interesting question to pursue were it not for the simple fact that thanks to the advent of the Murdoch media, there is no longer any concern with rules or the facts or fairness. “Fair and balanced” was only adopted by Fox News after it was realised that “Fair and Right” made them sound a little too much like the Nazis.
As Steve Bannon said: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real enemy is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Next time Peter Dutton announces on Sunday that he’ll hold another referendum if elected, only to say that he won’t on Thursday, or Dan Tehan tells us that Albanese should call off the referendum (which can’t happen without the approval of Parliament which won’t sit before the vote), then ask yourself if they haven’t decided to take Bannon’s advice.
P.S. I wonder if Dan Andrews thought about making a comment about how Rupert Murdoch quit before he did.
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