He may have slithered off to a life of bludging on his parliamentary pension and getting turned away from local golf clubs, but the spectre of ‘Dictator Dan’ still hangs dark over Victorian politics. Or, more accurately, a millstone around the Labor government’s neck. It’s all a long way from Andrews’s glory days as a Covid-era dictator wielding a state-wide Stockholm Syndrome.
Today, the news that Dan Andrews is still wielding behind-the-scenes policy influence on the government is a deep embarrassment for his successor premier, Jacinta Allan.
And a decade-plus old scandal from before Andrews’ own time as premier still has plenty of potential to harm the Labor government going into an election year. Mostly because it speaks volumes about the depth of corruption and the callous brutality of Victorian Labor.
Daniel Andrews has been given a pre-Christmas deadline to argue his defence in the latest court action over his infamous “bike boy” incident.
The former premier and his wife Catherine are being sued by cyclist Ryan Meuleman with whom they collided in an incident at Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula in 2013.
As hard as the Labor machine has tried to bury this horrific incident, with the active connivance of Victoria Police, it just won’t go away.
From the first, there were too-obvious questions about the behaviour of both the Andrewses and Victoria Police. When it emerged that a Labor-aligned law firm appeared to have coerced a badly injured teenager still confined to his hospital bed into signing a pitiful settlement and gag order, the stink only deepened.
From the very beginning, sceptics pointed out that the damage to the car, not to mention the cyclist, was glaringly inconsistent with Andrews’ claim that they came to a “complete stop” and “turned right from a stationary position” just “moments” before being “T-boned” by the bike. Rather, an expert review last year concluded that “It is most probable that the vehicle undertook a sweep [sic] turn at speed, cutting the corner and still on the incorrect side of the roadway… when the collision occurred.” The review concluded that the car was travelling at 45 km/h as it exited the side street.
Questions also hung over just who was driving: was it really the soon-to-be-premier’s wife? At least one witness reported Catherine Andrews as a passenger. And why did the police report use her maiden name when reporting her as the driver?
And why were certain police so eager to jump in and take control of the investigation? An unnamed female police officer from Rye Police Station on the Mornington Peninsula, where Catherine Andrews grew up and where the Andrews family have a holiday house, ‘jumped the call’ to take charge of the incident – two minutes after it had been allocated to another unit in closer proximity. The senior constable claimed she was closer to the incident, but was actually at Rye Police Station, six kilometres away. She didn’t leave the station for another six-and-a-half minutes.
Last year, a probe by former Assistant Commissioner for Traffic and Operations Dr Raymond Shuey found that the Andrews’ Ford Territory was “travelling at speed” and on the wrong side of the road when the crash occurred, and that Victoria Police had engaged in “an overt cover-up to avoid implicating a political figure in a life-threatening” incident.
Andrews has effectively refused to answer any of the questions arising from the review. A defamation case launched by Meuleman gives Andrews just weeks, now, to come clean.
The court this week gave Mr Andrews until December 19 to file his defence, with Mr Meuleman given until February 6 to respond to those arguments.
A case management hearing has been listed for February 11, during which a timetable for how the case is set to proceed would likely be set out.
If the matter is not privately settled and proceeds to trial, it is expected Mr Andrews would be called before the court to testify on oath about the circumstances surrounding the crash.
This is a political migraine Jacinta Allan could well do without in the run up to an election.
