There’s a reason I call my former home state “Cucktoria”. Victoria long ago overtook South Australia as the nation’s most left-wing state. Worse, no matter how many scandals the Andrews government racked up – Redshirts, the CFA – Victorians remained apparently blindly devoted to their Dear Leader.
Even as the Andrews government’s incompetence unleashed a devastating wave of COVID-19 infections and the state concomitantly descended into an elected dictatorship, Victorians still persisted in backing “Dan Jong-Un”. Despite the curfews and the goon squads kicking down doors and handcuffing pregnant mothers, Daniel Andrews continues to ride high in the polls.
The Australian’s Newspoll shows 62 per cent of Victorian voters agree the Premier has handled the health crisis well despite failures in hotel quarantine causing much of the state’s Covid-19 cases.
Separately, 61 per cent of voters around Australia, including 57 per cent of Coalition voters, said the restrictions, which have locked Victorians at home, were appropriate.
But is that really the case?
But ex-premier Jeff Kennett, who has openly criticised Andrews’ handling of the crisis, said he was not surprised by the Newspoll results.
“When you have people in situations of stress they always look to their leaders to actually be able to guide them to a safe place,” he told the Today show on Tuesday morning.
“We are being guided because the Government has failed, and I’ve always said that the aftermath of the coronavirus is going to be a lot more serious than, in fact, the coronavirus itself.
“We are going to have literally years of trying to recover here in Victoria. Businesses are closing all over the place. Our unemployment levels are rising. When we get to the next election it won’t be the coronavirus that the Premier has got to deal with, if he is still in office. It will actually be a shrinking economy … Opinion polls fluctuate, when you are up there is only one way to go.”
Kennett is speaking from bitter experience, here. The former premier assumed government in the midst of a devastating financial and governmental collapse in the state in the early 1990s. Despite vociferous protests, Kennett likewise rode high in the polls – until his third election saw his government wiped out. Labor have governed the state in an almost unbroken run since, but Andrews faces that crucial third election later this year.
Kennett found to his peril that his support was, as one commentator has characterised support for Andrews’ lockdowns, “a mile wide and an inch deep”.
More importantly, those shaking their heads at Victorians’ apparent collective Stockholm Syndrome are forgetting an important caveat of polling: never rely on a single poll. Trends are especially important. While the favourable Newspoll is getting all the attention, other polls bear looking at, too. Essential Media’s fortnightly “Essential Report” is much less comfortable reading for Andrews.
Essential very clearly shows that the proportion of people who rated the Victorian government’s response to coronavirus as “good” plunged from 65 to 49 per cent in mid-July — a massive 28 per cent (not percentage point) fall. Most of the time since then, it has stayed below the 50 per cent mark.
At the same time, Essential again shows the Andrews government has been firmly at the bottom of the class throughout that same timeframe, the only government regularly receiving failing grades. Their latest polling puts the next lowest state, New South Wales, on 67 per cent — a full 35 per cent (again, not percentage points) ahead of Danandrewstan.
The #IstandwithDan Twits can settle down[…]Dictator Dan is a dictator dud.
Essential shows that’s how the punters feel.
As Wu-Flu cases plunge, Andrews is doubling down on the dictatorship. His latest “Omnibus Bill” is a monstrous power grab that allows bureaucrats to deputise anyone they see fit as a COVID-Cop with full powers to arrest citizens on even a suspicion of harbouring anti-lockdown sentiments.
Let’s see how Victorians handle that.
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