As Judith Collins once said of Jacinda Ardern’s constant professions of “kindness”, the more earnestly a man reassures you of his honesty, the more carefully you should watch your pockets. As Ardern’s behaviour in recent months especially has shown, her self-vaunted “kindness” looks more like cheap window-dressing for a leader whose incompetence is only exceeded by her vindictiveness.
Ardern’s socialist Australian bestie, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews is cut from much the same cloth. While bragging about running Australia’s “progressive capital” and waxing strident about “bigotry”, the reality of his regime is as different as is Ardern’s from her glossy women’s magazine propaganda. Victoria under Andrews has turned into a nasty, Stasi-state. Journalists who’ve dared question the premier attest that they are immediately subjected to a barrage of hate from the “IStandWithDan” crowd: “there’ve been death threats and rape threats and photos of me circulated on the internet for weeks,” says The Australian’s Rachel Baxendale. “Some pretty violent, nasty stuff involving suffocation and strangling and gagging.”
Ironically, adds Baxendale, much of it seems to come from people who describe themselves in their social media profiles as feminists who believe in things like ‘kindness’, ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’.”
Other female journalists and writers concur that they have been subject to the same treatment.
It appears that the toxic hatred in Victorian politics starts at the very top.
One of Dan Andrews own Labor MPs launched a scathing attack on the Premier for ‘bullying’, saying he makes women ‘disappear’ from public life with his uncompromising approach.
On Wednesday MP Kaushaliya Vaghela crossed the floor to vote against her own party in a parliamentary motion and has since claimed Premier Andrews made her ‘feel unsafe’.
Andrews has long been notorious as a paranoid micro-manager, despite his Sgt. Schultz-like claims to “know nuzzink” about Victoria’s disastrous hotel quarantine regime. In fact, the Premier has a personal staff of spin doctors three times the size of even the Prime Minister’s, outnumbering even the public health department.
This Praetorian guard allegedly acts with the ruthlessness of Soviet commissars.
The rogue MP said that members within the party are ‘scared of the Premier because they know he is so spiteful’.
Much of the complaint centred around the Premier’s allies allegedly promising taxpayer-funded grants and jobs for ‘favours’.
Ms Vaghela also made the sensational claim she was afraid of being alone at events or in parliament for fears of the Labor Party’s ‘gang’.
‘The gang says if people do what they say, then in return the gang will advise the Premier or the relevant minister in deciding who should get such roles, in returning favours,’ she wrote in the May letter.
As the Soviets themselves were wont to do, Dictator Dan’s hench-people are trying to discredit a counter-revolutionary by calling her mental health into question.
Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes […] claims to have sent Ms Vaghela a message to ask if she’s okay and offer her support.
Treasurer Tim Pallas echoed the sentiment and said the party will do what it can to help Ms Vaghela.
‘It is worrying for me that she said that and it goes to the state of mind,’ he said.
‘I can assure her should she need assistance from the government in any way, to help with her state of mind, we will support her all the way.’
Daily Mail
They’re from the government and they’re here to help, after all.
