Premier Dan Andrews walks into the 12th Floor of the Greek Centre he is here for the Greek Community’s Antipodes Festival. The first festival after a two-year due to the Covid pandemic.
Andrews moves to the windows and scans Melbourne’s cityscape.
“What a magnificent city! What a great city.”
Saturday’s downpour ended. The final rays of a maudlin sun seep through retreating clouds. The premier begins with Victoria’s floods.
“It’s bad, people are suffering, but we will support them,” he says.
Two years of pandemic and accident on a flight of stairs broke his back in 2021 and forced him in months of rehab. Now major floods. There’s seem to be no respite for Andrews.
COVID – “a one in a hundred-year event”
Not since Jeff Kennett has a leader in Australia garnered equal levels of adulation and opprobrium. There’s no grey space between the ‘We love Dan’ and ‘Dictator Dan’ camps.
His government’s response to the Covid pandemic will be endlessly debated.
Like Gaius Julius Caesar, Andrews crossed the Rubicon early. The die was cast. Hard and fast in his war against Covid where he made “necessary, if unpopular decisions.”
The harsh lockdowns – the longest in the world – took their toll. Some of the restrictions on the advice of the Chief Health Officer (CHO) Brett Sutton reached levels of absurdity. Like the short-lived ban on kid’s playgrounds. The CHO’s advice was not always sage and near the end of the second lockdown the premier began to make decisions less reliant on the CHO’s advice.
“If you run a newspaper, or you run a business, or you’re in politics, and you’re in a leadership position, you don’t get to choose the challenges you face.”
“In the middle of a one in a hundred-year event, you must do the right thing, not the popular thing, there were some very, very, long nights,” he exhales.
Decisions, “weighed heavily” on him, “they were very difficult decisions, very difficult decisions.”
He talks about “more than $10 billion in business support, dining vouchers and direct cash payments to business, payment to casual workers off sick…
“I decided, my cabinet and I decided, but also Cath [his wife] and I, on a very personal level decided, that we would do the right thing.”
His wife was the one who shared those “long nights” with him.
“You might make a popular decision, that may be popular for week, and then the whole thing would unravel; no one will get a hospital bed, not just for Covid, no hospital bed for a heart attack, for a premature baby, for a car accident, then popularity is not what’s needed, leadership is needed.”
Family misfortune a template for leadership
Multicultural communities were hard hit by Covid and the lockdowns. Many in the inner city suburbs, professionals and middle class stayed home and worked. Multicultural Victorians in the outer west and north felt forgotten.
They lacked the resources to deal with the lockdowns. Small business owners and ABN holders also felt forgotten.
Andrews recognises the impact. He is also from a small business household.
“My parents earnt every dollar, they ever had,” he says.
He recounts the “great misfortune” that befell his parents after the shop next door to them “blew up in an arson attack.”
“My parents’ insurance wouldn’t cover them they had to start again.”
“I know what it’s like to have everything you worked for washed away in one moment.”
He advised his father to declare bankruptcy, but his father said, ‘No I am not doing that’ .
“My father built up again from nothing,” and that gave him the fortitude to make decisions.
“My focus is on those businesses that did it tough, on families that did it tough. People who lost loved ones. And whilst the numbers were smaller than parts of Europe, tragedy is still tragedy.”
“We must be vigilant” – Multicultural media and communications
At the start of the pandemic the government’s communications with multicultural communities were inadequate.
Departments spent on much on social media and lazy translations. All at the expense of ethnic media.
Conspiracy theories permeated into the Greek community.
Covid safe behaviours became confused. Covid infections as well as illness and death continued. Angst and hostility were a product.
Andrews stepped into the breach after multicultural media complained. He released funds into ethnic media.
He says the government must ensure that the legislated five percent to ethnic media advertising (Kennett in the 1990s) is met.
“We need vigilance to make sure that every department, everybody across government is making sure that they’re speaking to every single Victorian,” Andrews says.
Support for multicultural media is vital in modern political discourse says Andrews.
“The need for more voices, in terms of our political discourse, our public life, and our civil society, we need more thought, and more opinion.”
“The concentration of media [in Australia] is not healthy and multicultural media play an incredibly important role.”
Time for multicultural festivals to be taken seriously
Arts funding agencies ignore multicultural festivals. Yet they play a major role in the nation’s cultural ecology.
Andrews is willing to consider “new ways to promote the standing and the place” of these festivals.
“Antipodes is one of the most significant cultural, events and cultural celebrations in Victoria, it speaks to what it is to be Greek Victorian, and it’s not just about celebrating great cultural heritage; just as important it’s sharing great culture.”
Over 100,000 people on Lonsdale Street do not go unnoticed.
“Perhaps we can begin viewing these festivals differently, supporting them in a different way, providing a dedicated lane.”
Soon after the interview the premier announced $800,000 for the Antipodes festival over four years, “ensuring its certainty.”
Greece in the horizon
The antiquities exhibition at Museums Victoria from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens earlier in 2022, Open Horizons: Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections was “significant”.
” It was led by the Greek Minister for Culture and Sports, Lina Mendoni, who he says is “unique as she has an archaeological background.”
The Victorian and Greek governments are now preparing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
“We are close to getting an MoU between our government and the Greek Ministry for Culture and Sport; it opens us up to the rest of the Greek government in trade and all manner of things.”
Mendoni had an epiphany when she saw First Nations’ art in Australia.
“An MoU will have to be a two-way thing, we all get excited when antiquities come here but send Indigenous art back to Greece, it would be truly amazing.”
Greek language “the greatest inheritance”
Greek remains one of the top seven languages in Victoria, however teaching of the language at state schools has diminished.
After-hours Greek school is challenging on families. “Everyone has busy lives now between sports and all sorts of other stuff to then go to another place is a burden,” he says.
Andrews says that the push to have Greek taught at state schools needs to be “driven by the parents and the community”.
“If the community want to come to me with a proposal to see more students of Greek heritage learning to study Greek at state schools, my door is open.”
“There is something magical about Greek and such an influential culture globally, and such a pivotal language in the history of our world being passed down.”
The premier adds that it is “the greatest inheritance any Greek family can give to their kids and then their grandkids.”
The elections – “you’ve got to work hard for every seat”
It seems almost impossible for the Coalition to claw back 18 seats after their drubbing in the last election.
Andrews knows his Greek philosophy and history and says “hubris can be political poison.”
“There are no safe seats, there never were, you’ve got to work hard for every seat, and every vote,” he says.
It’s not about “defeating an opponent”, Andrews says.
He wants to win “for the work, to win for the obligation, to do difficult things, to make big challenge, to drive people.”
“That’s why I’m here still, some didn’t think I would be, we all have challenges, but I am energised.”
It is the “people’s choice” he says. He also points to the “uncertain times” and his government’s “track record of investment, of delivery, of jobs, of growth, but also big reform, bold plans.”
“Every person that reads your newspaper, know that their power bills are twice what they were, when the Liberal Party in their infinite wisdom decided to sell our energy companies to the private sector.”
Keynesian bold moves
One “bold move” is the reintroduction of the State Electricity Commission (SEC) he announced.
Along with an emission reduction target of up to 80 percent by 2035 and a net-zero target brought back by five years to 2045 a revived SEC will be a state-run energy retailer.
A body blow to the privatisation theology of the 1990s. It also reflects the reality of a post-Covid world where more muscular government intervention is needed in the economy.
“This is old technology, broken technology that made $23 billion out of pensioners and families.”
“The question is do we replace it with renewable energy? Yes. Do we replace them with publicly owned renewable energy? Yes. And all the profits that we generate get reinvested back into more energy, putting downward pressure on prices.”
If energy is run for profit, “you want energy to be scarce so the price goes up – simple as that” says Andrews.
An SEC under the stewardship of the state with its own independent board, will according to the premier, “benefit every single Victorian because all the profits will go back into wind, hydro, solar, hydrogen, … whatever technology, something we have not even heard of yet, it could be battery.”
Jobs are central to the equation and he projects “59,000 extra jobs” and he re-emphasises, “59,000 extra jobs.”
“They’re good jobs too, skilled jobs and well-paid jobs.”
A neo-Keynesian way seems a trend in a post pandemic world. The ‘free’ global market failed and supply chains are in tatters.
A big Victoria and a big Australia
Andrews is alert to the labour shortages afflicting Australia he says. He rang Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “the day after he’d won.”
“I said, ‘I’ve spoken to [Dominic] Perrottet and we will be writing to you to increase the skilled migration and you’ll get no politics from us, we don’t need a silly debate about this, we need to get this done.
“And you’ve got to put extra staff on to deal with the visa backlog’.”
There are up to “a million applications sitting in an in-tray” he says.
“People can go anywhere, if you take too long to approve them, they can go to Canada, Singapore, America and then we lose them.”
195,000 immigrants are “a good start” and he has no appetite for “fly in fly out” workers.
“I want people that come in here, to build a life with skills and they can grow those skills, everybody, from engineers, to nurses, to journalists… I want a bigger Victoria, a bigger Australia.”
Andrews’ Odyssey
The interview ends when Minister Steve Dimopoulos and MP Nick Staikos arrive.
The mood turns light. Advisers, the premier and his minister as well as Neos Kosmos journalists mill around and talk of all things Greek.
Andrews eyes out the library darts to it and pulls out a copy of Homer’s Odyssey.
“I had to read this at school, as well as the Aeneid” he says.
Many lessons were learnt from Odysseus’ ten year journey home from the ashes of Troy.
Andrews if elected in November will by 2024 be head of this state for 10 years.
Odysseus’ cleverness, (or cunning) and over-confidence may lead Andrews to his Ithaca – another electoral victory.