My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's theirsday, the twenty eighth of September. I'm Zara, I'm Sam. You know him for his North Faced jackets and extremely long COVID era press conferences, but Daniel Andrews's legacy will be as one of Australia's most electorally successful yet somehow also
divisive premiers that the country has ever seen. In today's deep Dive, we're going to look at the premiers nine years in power and how Daniel Andrews will be remembered and what you need to know about Victoria's incoming Premier, Jainter Allen.
I have been elected indors unanimously by my caucus colleagues to replace the fabulous Daniel Andrews.
But for SAMs more news from PwC That's Right.
An independent review into PwC Australia has found several shortcomings across the firm's operations and culture. The review comes after revelations some PwC leaders misused confidential government information to help clients avoid tax. It found the professional services firm had a disproportionate focus on revenue, a culture that restricted constructive change, and a chief executive who had excessive power. PwC says it will implement the reviews twenty three recommendations.
Quantas CEO Vanessa Hudson has defended the cost of the National carriers airfares, saying they are standard across the market. Hudson addressed a Senate inquiry on the airline industry just weeks into the roles she took over from Alan Joyce. Senators also heard from Qatar Airways representatives who said they were surprised by a previous federal government decision to block more catar flights from coming into Australia.
The Writers Guild of America has voted to end its one hundred and forty eight days strike after reaching an agreement with major Hollywood studios. The five hundred riders covered by the union will now resume work today. However, it's still uncertain when the actors' strike will end and.
The good news pharmacies in New South Wales can issue resupplies of the oral contraceptive pill as part of a new trial. Eligible patients can now access the pill without another GP appointment at over nine hundred participating pharmacies. Its hopes the trial will also ease pressures on GP services.
Daniel Andrews is one of the most electorally successful yet polarizing leaders Australia has ever seen, but when he was sworn in as Premier in December twenty fourteen, he was considered to have defied the odds by defeating a one
term government as a relatively unknown political figure. Hard to believe now, but up until then, the vibe around the would be premier was that essentially no one could remember if he was Daniel Andrews or Andrew Daniel, a point of confusion that the then coalition government in Victoria actually used to their advantage. But an effective rebranding from Labor to just Dam and an effective election campaign helped him to win the twenty fourteen election.
So this is a premier who's been in power in the state for nine years. He's actually the longest serving labor premier in Victoria's history. And when he came up to the press conference this week to announce his resignation to the media pack, it was clear that he wanted to point to certain parts of that time in office, which he says shaped his legacy. Before we get to what other people think his legacy will be. What did he say to find his time as leader?
Well, there are a few key areas that Andrews alluded to being really proud of. You're right, he got up and there was I think it was quite an unexpected press.
Conference, kind of came from nowhere.
I mean came from nowhere. In the timing of it. It's grand final weekend in Victoria. It's like quite a big time. But everyone that watches politics has known for a very long time that he was going to resign sometime. I mean, I remember years ago there were already rumblings of just intrall and replacing Daniel Andrews.
So would you say you were expecting it this year.
Yeah, I was expecting it last year. But in reflecting on his own time in power, it was really interesting to see what Andrews himself wanted to really highlight. So there are a couple of things. The first was that he was proud of his government's social policies.
To lead the most progressive branch of Australia's oldest political party for thirteen years has been an honor.
So things like Victoria's voluntary assisted dying laws, so their euthanasia laws which passed in twenty seventeen. The state also held a landmark Royal Commission into family violence, and his government also introduced safe injecting rooms as a harm minimization strategy for drug users in the state. And so those were kind of the social elements that Andrews really wanted to highlight over his last nine years.
And we spoke on the podcast last week about a topic that we didn't know at the time was going to be what Daniel Andrews described as his last big piece of policy reform.
Yeah, that's right. We spoke about the Victorian government's housing statement, which we discussed as part of that Airbnb tax episode. So it's an episode called the Beginning of the End for Airbnb if you want to go back and listen to that. But when it came to what Andrews said was his defining moment during his time as premier. He didn't actually mention housing or social reform.
It happened Thursday afternoon when I got on the test train at Metro Tunnel with no media and I traveled underneath the city at eighty kilometers an hour on a train that was made right here in Victoria, through a tunnel that's getting very close to being finished, all because of the good work of Victorians.
People say that politicians aren't real people.
Him and Joe Biden both love a train.
I mean, I'm myself not too fond of a train, but there you go. Maybe that's why I'm not a politician. But I think that this answer, actually, when you think about Daniel Andrews and his government, wasn't actually particularly surprising. He's really tried to brand himself as this like infrastructure premiere. A lot of the government's announcements over the last nearly decade have been around infrastructures, so things like metro tunnels
to toll roads and railways. He's also known for the removal of level crossings, so that's where railways cross over roads and it's so funny every time I log onto Twitter or x whatever we call it, it's Daniel Andrews announcing a different level crossing has been removed and there's like this really big reaction to it. So that was a really big thing.
When he's not in the north Face, he's in a fluovest.
Yeah, exactly, and so he's built a reputation as really investing in infrastructure. But I do think that it needs to be said that he's also, at the same time been associated with the delays and the cost blowouts that have begun to characterize some of these projects.
Let's talk about those costs, because there've been a source of some real tension for Daniel Andrews through his time as Premierhip. Yeah.
So Victoria is currently facing over one hundred billion dollars in debt, and predictions show that that debt could grow from one hundred and thirty five billion dollars next year to one hundred and seventy one billion in the twenty twenty six to twenty seven financial year. And I mean
putting that into real life context. We recently on the pod also spoke about Victoria pulling out of the Commonwealth Games and that decision was based on the fact that the forecasted spending on the games actually blew out to six or seven billion dollars and that was according to the governments. So a lot of the commentary I imagine over the next couple of weeks will include this discussion about the state of Victoria's economy and the economy that the Jainta Allen government will now take on.
So we've spoken about social policy, we've spoken about the infrastructure and then the associated costs that come with all of those reforms. But undoubtedly it's Daniel Andrews standing there at eleven am in the north face jacket telling us about COVID in Victoria that will stick in people's minds.
Yeah, I mean, I think that Daniel Andrews and COVID are almost synonymous at this stage. I think that, you know, while every state leader was dealing with the pandemic, the experience of Victorians and the experience of the Andrews led Victorian government is quite unique. That's for a number of reasons.
Of course, the fact that Melbourne experienced two hundred and sixty three days in lockdown, making it the home of one of the longest lockdowns in the world, and Daniel Andrews said repeatedly during that time and since that time,
that he was implementing these measures to save lives. One of the ways that this played out was when the Andrews government ordered the lockdown of three thousand residents in nine public housing towers in Melbourne, and the Victorian Ombudsman later found that this decision was a breach of human rights laws. So Andrews was clearly quite divisive during the pandemic.
But I think what I found really interesting was what happened after the pandemic, which was that there was this very clear narrative on social media in mainstream media about how unpopular Daniel Andrews was and how unpopular his decisions had been. But then we went to an election shortly after in twenty twenty two, and not only did Daniel Andrews win back the premiership, he actually did it with a slightly larger margin than he had won at the
twenty eighteen election. And I think for Andrews himself and his supporters, they used that election win as evidence that he had people's support, including for how Victoria handled COVID.
So yesterday we heard that Justinta Alan would step up to replace Daniel Andrews. What do we know about her?
So just into Alan has long been con considered the replacement for Daniel Andrews. She served as his deputy Premier and after he announced his resignation she was the first and for a while the only person to put up her hand to contest the leadership. Alan will be the second woman to become the Premier of Victoria, which she acknowledged in a press conference yesterday afternoon.
I did hope I'd get through this with them becoming emotional. I also hope it says two young women, older women, women from cross different backgrounds, of all parts of the stage that leadership takes on different shapes and sizes.
She was elected to State Parliament in nineteen ninety nine as the member for Bendigo East and she's very much been considered a key figure of the successive Andrews governments over the last nine years. During the pandemic, Allan was appointed to Victoria's COVID nineteen Crisis Council and stepped up as Deputy Premier last year following the resignation of James Molina. But I mean, I think it's fair to say that she has nowhere near the same level of public familiarity
as Daniel Andrews enjoyed. But then again, neither did Daniel Andrews when he became premier.
Do you think we'd know as much about Daniel Andrews on a national scale as we do now if not for the pandemic?
No way, absolutely no. I think that a lot of Australians prior to the pandemic would not have been able to name their state or territories leader. I say that were full confidence.
And have you seen other state and territory leaders also be kind of defined by their role in the pandemic as well?
Well?
I think it's interesting if you look across the country there is now only two COVID era leaders left. Well, so there's annisagea Paliche in Queensland and Andrew Barr in the Act. Everywhere else there has been either a change in leadership or there has been a reshuffle among the same party. We saw Mark McGowan, who also had a lot of pressure on him during the pandemic, resign recently. And I just think that both the profile that came with being a leader during that time, but also the
pressure that we have seen. I think resignations sped up in a way that they probably wouldn't have had these leaders not gone through the pandemic.
It certainly has been a while since we've had the cadence of a daily press conference from a state or territory leader.
Yeah, and I don't necessarily think we'll ever hopefully see that again.
Thanks for listening to that episode of The Daily Oz. If you're listening to this from Victoria, we'd love to know your thoughts on Daniel Andrews as a leader. You can leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify, or you can dm us if you're listening on another platform. We'll be back again tomorrow morning in your ears. Until then, have a great date.