Dan’s fans outweigh his foes — but they’re not looking through rose-coloured glasses

Steven Meyer writes: Warts and all, and there are many warts, I’m a Dan fan (“Dan Andrews’ secret is that he understands Victoria, and his haters don’t”). Debt? The city is still gridlocked. What would it have been like if Dan Andrews hadn’t initiated an infrastructure build? Scandal? I’m afraid that’s par for the course with state governments in Australia.

If a “saintly perfect premier” had been available, he or she would have been a better option but in the absence of a saintly PP Dan served us well. Certainly he was a no-brainer if the alternative was Matthew Guy.

Still, everything has a use-by date and I think Dan’s premiership has reached that point. He is wise to step down now — unlike John Howard who clung to power until the bitter end.

Sue Goss writes: Love or hate “Dictator Dan”? Hated the long lockdown. Loved throwing love and spare toothpaste at our neighbours. But not for 220 days. Loved the courage of the man fronting up to stupid repetitive irrelevant questions for years. Rather like being still alive at 75.

Do I hate this bright red bloke (I vote bright green) who turned the dark blues purple, and
the bright yellows orange or black? I hated the hate. I hated what the haters did, the increasingly eye-wateringly stupid media, the way The Age turned dark blue, the way formerly reasonable writers bowed to new owners and wrote their unreasonable pieces, said their correct lines, lied on air and TV until half of us believed it. Stands to reason doesn’t it?

I hated Andrews for what he did to the media. I learnt about social media, that you can’t argue with nutters, that they raise the game to new lows. (I thought hatred of sports villains was bad but this!) So yes. I hated Victoria. But quite liked, as I said, being alive. At a pinch. In a state seething with hate.

The decision was easy in the end. We left Victoria, place of our birth and our fathers and grandfathers. Emigrated to the Midlands UK. Away from all that hate that Andrews started and the horrors of Peta Credlin, Andrew Bolt and the nasty party ran with. I caught COVID the moment I arrived and live with long COVID. Which doesn’t exist in Australia. Because COVID is a myth put about by dictators to rule the masses. Or something.

In the UK, a place which is incredibly free of hate, and tries hard to be reasonable despite everything you read in the papers, we have been basking in the glory of coming from Victoria, an island of wisdom and common understanding, fine leadership and democratic purpose which saved millions of people from death and disease. Gosh you were lucky to have Dan Andrews, they say. What a hero.

But those red T-shirts. Almost as bad as Nick Kyrgios’s underarm serves. But not quite.

Bill Westerbeek writes: Andrews was a great leader who brought about human rights legislation that mattered (safe schools, dying with dignity, etc) that had no direct political upside and he happily ignored the potential political risk to himself — things that any other political leaders would have stepped around.

Andrew Blair writes: The thing the haters — particularly those in mainstream media, mostly controlled by Murdoch — never understood was their double standards and how much that pushed people to vote for Labor. In the age of the internet it was not hard to compare the treatment of Andrews, Victoria and Victorians with the lapdog approach taken for Gladys Berejiklian’s “gold standard” and NSW.

Articles were rife lambasting “Dictator Dan” while the same personalities (I won’t call them journalists because they exhibited no journalistic credentials in their behaviour and vile bias) fawned all over Berejiklian. The more they railed against us Victorians, the more we dug our heels in. This was a siege mentality taking hold, not Stockholm syndrome, as detractors falsely claimed.

Andrews was not the messiah, but neither were Berejiklian or Scotty from marketing.

Bob Milinkovic writes: I don’t love or hate any politician, but the self-centred, megalomaniac former Victorian premier, who cowardly resigned before he could be held accountable, deserves no thanks and no accolades, only goodbye and good riddance.

Poor little rich girl

Ian Brazier writes: Re “The media needs to stop presenting objectively rich people as battlers”: the problem is not so much that The Australian Financial Review is misrepresenting Leanne Taylor as a battler but rather the target audience of the AFR from their lofty seats would call her a battler. This is who the AFR is talking to. The rest of us, “the great unwashed”, do not read the AFR or any other newspaper for that matter as (a) we can’t afford to and (b) they are all owned by the obscenely rich who would think Taylor is indeed poor.

The rich owners’ editorial influence ensures that the real plight of the real average wage-and-salary worker is rarely discussed let alone put into print in their papers. Don’t want to upset the readers with stories about poor people and their problems. More profitable to fill all those column inches with ads about overseas holidays. Bugger! Is that what a passport costs?!

Ian Humphreys writes: A great story. I am 74, with 48k left in my super account. I draw $600 out every fortnight which I fear will finish before my earthly body does, leaving me in trouble with my half pension not enough to survive.

Weighing his words

John Peel writes: As both Home Affairs and Immigration minister, Peter Dutton’s pronouncements were so peppered with whoppers it would make a policeman blush (“If Peter Dutton isn’t an outright liar, he’s a clear-eyed believer of his own untruths”). But then he once was a policeman, so perhaps that’s where he learnt the art. Certainly his pronouncements on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament seem to come effortlessly to him — which must have required some practice.

Marion Harper writes: Peter Dutton is everything that is reprehensible in today’s politicians, regardless of their party or nation. Politicians exist in a cushioned world and the rules that govern a socially just society simply don’t exist for them. While there are degrees of what I call polyitus (politics of dissembling, suppressing, embroidering truth), there are those who take polyitus to a new level. Such is Dutton. 

Dutton not only doesn’t recognise rules that govern ordinary mortals, he also doesn’t recognise rules that govern his peers. I am 91 and cannot recall a politician as reprehensible and dishonest — except perhaps Joh Bjelke-Peterson in Queensland and Henry Bolte in Victoria. 

One thought comforts me: every day that passes, every comment Dutton makes, wins him more enemies, not only in his opposition but in his own party.

Mike Karpeles writes: Surely with examples of Donald Trump and Dutton and Scott Morrison it’s time for all politicians to have to pass an integrity and compassion test before they set foot in Parliament. Imagine a world where our rulers actually practised what they preached. Free speech should be allied with accountability. Sadly negativity trumps authenticity.

Barry Welch writes: After two Queensland police officers were murdered at Wieambilla in December last year by three people who were into conspiracy theories and sovereign citizenship, an emotional Dutton paid tribute to the officers and offered condolences to their families. Now, just months later, Dutton through his anti-Voice tactics and those of his Indigenous Australians spokeswoman, is providing succour and legitimacy to conspiracy theorists and the sovereign citizen movement. This would have to be the most cynical, hypocritical and callous act by any political leader in our nation’s history.

For what shall it profit a man if he keeps the leadership of the LNP, and loses his soul?