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Life’s a funny old thing when you’re a former Dear Leader of the Covid Cult who’s retired from government and hoping to just slip quietly into the shadows. One minute, you’re getting fast-tracked for a gong by your Labor mates, the next, an old scandal that just won’t go away is landing you back in the courts.
One thing’s for certain, the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow in the former People’s Republic of Dandrewstan. It’s been over a decade since the Andrews family tank collided with a kid on a bike, but the simmering scandal around exactly what happened in the crash and immediately after refuses to die.
In the latest twist, the former Victorian premier has been ordered to hand in his phone records from the day.
Lawyers for former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews have agreed to hand in phone records from the day his family car hit and injured a teenage cyclist in 2013.
Ryan Meuleman was seriously injured in a crash involving the Andrews’ Ford Territory – driven by Catherine Andrews – on the Morning Peninsula on January 7, 2013 when he was 15-years-old […]
An initial subpoena ordered Mr Andrews to hand in phone records spanning an 11-year period, however this was adjusted and limited to records from the day of the collision.
Less than three hours before a hearing in the Supreme Court scheduled for 10:30am, Mr Andrews’ lawyers agreed to release their client’s phone records.
The event has long been shrouded in scandal and contradictory accounts.
The Andrews family have maintained their story that the car was T-boned by Mr Meuleman’s bike, while the cyclist argues the car was speeding and “seemed to come out of nowhere”.
Mr Meuleman was struck 17m on from the Melbourne Road and Ridley Street intersection and suffered a punctured lung and broken ribs.
The Australian
An ambulance report unearthed last year appears, some claim, to contradict the Andrews’s claims about how the crash happened.
A bombshell document obtained by the Herald Sun on Friday, made by Ambulance Victoria paramedics who attended the crash scene, is at odds with the couple’s claims that they came to a “complete stop” and “turned right from a stationary position” moments before the collision […]
“The serious injuries to the left side of Ryan’s body and the observations made by the ambulance officers who attended the crash are completely inconsistent with the claims to police made by Mr Andrews and his wife that their vehicle was travelling at a low speed,” barrister Daryl Dealehr told the Herald Sun.
The subpoena is part of ongoing legal action by Meuleman against Labor-linked law firm Slater & Gordon.
Mr Meuleman was paid $80,000 by the TAC after the accident, but his family have raised “concerns” over the process.
Both his parents insist they never engaged Slater & Gordon, a Labor-aligned law firm, to represent their son after the crash, and the firm has refused to reveal how it came to be involved.
News.com.au
Which is just one of the curious irregularities abounding in the case. The crash was only attended by “two very junior police”, according to former Crown Prosecutor James Bowen, which he calls a “serious breach of normal police procedure for investigating serious traffic collisions”. Standard procedure should have been for the road to have been closed off and for police experts from the Accident Investigation Unit to investigate, none of which happened.
Neither Catherine or Daniel Andrews was breathalysed after the crash, although police initially falsely claimed they were. Mr Meuleman was never given the opportunity to give a statement to police. In fact, the Andrews’s weren’t formally interviewed at all until nearly a month after the incident. The former premier and his wife were also allowed to leave the scene of the crash, with Andrews driving the badly damaged SUV to the family’s nearby holiday home.
The crash was not publicly reported by police, and Meuleman’s father said police tried to conceal the driver’s identity. An insurance claim was lodged under Catherine Andrews’ maiden name. The crash was not made public until nine days later, when the Meuleman family approached the media.
Ryan Meuleman also claims he was told by a lawyer from Slater & Gordon that to get compensation for the accident he had to keep quiet and not contest the compensation payment. “It sort of scared me into signing straight away and just agreeing with it.”
Remember — this was a 15 year old kid, in hospital recovering from a crash which nearly killed him.
Now, Meuleman’s lawyers want to know who the former premier called on his mobile phone in the minutes after the crash.
