Earlier this week, an unnamed state Labor MP labelled Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews a “tyrant” and a “dictator” after he blamed former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos for the state’s hotel quarantine failures:
“It has put a lot of people on edge,” one government Minister said.
Another Labor MP hit out at Mr Andrews saying “he is a tyrant. He is a dictator with a capital D.I.C.K.
“He doesn’t care about anybody but himself … Jenny knows he lied and I don’t like the way she was treated”…
When asked if she felt as though she had been thrown under the bus by Mr Andrews Ms Mikakos responded: “I made a statement yesterday, I have nothing else to say.”
It comes as senior figures within Labor are moving to stop a key member of Mr Andrews’ faction from taking Jenny Mikakos’ spot in the Victorian parliament, citing party requirements for female representation.
Now former Victorian Labor MP turned independent, Adem Somyurek, has dug the knife deep into ‘Dictator’ Dan Andrews:
As the only former minister not constrained by party discipline, it is in the public interest that I attempt to shed light on how we got into such a mess, with so much pain and destruction for so many Victorians.
What is not in evidence before the inquiry is the decision-making processes of the executive and the potential intermediary role played by their staff (particularly the Premier’s staff). Therefore, it is assumed that the executive is captured by the bureaucracy whereas, in reality, the bureaucracy is docile and subservient to the micromanaging and commanding style of the Premier…
Andrews may be the only hard-core factional apparatchik to have ever become the Premier of a state government in Australia. The fact that Victoria has suffered the worst public policy disaster in Australian history, and still no one knows who made key decisions that caused the disaster, will affirm that backroom political operators should not be put in party leadership ever again…
There is good reason why factional apparatchik are not premiers.
They operate within informal, opaque processes, where scrutiny and transparency is non-existent and where written communication is discouraged. Factional operators are more interested in outcomes than procedural niceties. Andrews cut his teeth in this political milieu…
On March 27, he publicly decreed the use of private security guards in hotel quarantine without any cabinet decision at all.
Given Andrews’ penchant for informal processes, we do not have a definitive answer to the important question of who made the decision to use private security guards — but through deductive reasoning we can come up with a strong probability.
The fact is the hotel quarantine should have come before cabinet, and then the cabinet decision should have been operationalised by agencies and departments. This never happened…
Within government, that Andrews made the decision to use private security guards is not a matter of conjecture. Why he chose to make such a risky decision is a matter of much speculation…
The result is the biggest public policy disaster in Australian history.
In Andrews’ government, everything is centralised and micromanaged, even the most talented ministers lack autonomy and the bureaucracy is cowered by central control. Take it from me, nothing happens by “creeping assumption” in this tightly controlled government.
Somyurek is a disgraced former MP and no doubt there is some “sour grapes” at play here.
Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that Daniel Andrews at the very least knew who made the decisions around hotel quarantine. And most likely it was him.
