The selling of a premier: a morning with Dan Andrews

“Well, I don’t comment on polls,” Dan Andrews says, colourlessly. He addresses his answer at the bank of cameras ahead of him, though the questioner is to his left.

“But don’t voters have the right to know …”

“My position hasn’t changed,” Andrews says, three more times, before the follow-up has finished. “Look, there’s already a big poll going on, it’s called the election …” — he uses this as a step to jump back on the platform — “… and that offers voters a choice between our positive plan and Matthew Guy, who will cut, cancel and close projects …”

The serious look, the narrowing of the eyes when he started answering flourishes into a broad warm smile, again directed to the camera, as he returns, with no visible exertion, to his talking points. He starts to play that invisible squeezebox only politicians have access to.

Journalists had arrived at the sprawling worksite in North Melbourne roughly an hour earlier, and were draped in tradie cosplay — hi-vis vests, helmets, goggles. We swap out shoes for workboots. We were led through russet and grey expanses of gravel, a mirror of the saturnine clouds overhead, hollowed buildings off in the distances, like the first colony on the moon or a war zone. The real workers look at us with unconcealed amusement.

We are ferried into what will one day be the entrance to the Arden train station, the cavernous, brick-effect tiles arcing over our heads. It’s open at both ends, and the bitter wind of this endless, miserable November seeps listlessly through. A supporting cast filters in, trailing clouds of easy laughter, work gear, hard hats covered in union logos and SEC stickers.

We are there for roughly half an hour before he arrives. The work noise suddenly falls, the equivalent of the house lights dimming. Andrews and Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan breeze in, shaking hands and chatting with the crowd that will mass behind them in the presser, before turning to face the cameras, Andrews checking his watch, and commencing.

Dan Andrews has five points he wants to make today: “A positive plan. A big build. Matthew Guy will cut projects. This will make the economy smaller. That will hurt everyone.” His job, and Allan’s, is to ensure that we take as little else away as possible. Questions come in about many things that are not Labor’s positive plan or Matthew Guy’s fondness for cuts, the answer via a kind of verbal parkour, is a combination of those phrases tacked together like Orwell’s “sections of a prefabricated hen-house”.

And there it is, the stuff everyone says about him, the barrelling past dissent, the confidence, but also the skill, the controlled tenor of it.

So he is asked, several times about his personal unpopularity, and the drag it may have on the overall ALP vote: “I don’t comment on polls.”

The questioner persists, citing internal polling that apparently shows Andrews himself will be a drag on Labor’s vote.

“You’re free to assert what you like about internal this or external that. I know you guys have got a job to do, to write opinion pieces, and that’s fine, but my job is to present Victorians with a positive plan … ” and then it’s back to the script.

But all this is fairly standard politician stuff and doesn’t explain quite why Andrews still attracts a level of adulation and vitriol that would be simply unthinkable for a politician like him pre-COVID. Legitimate criticism of his government is frequently drowned out by truly bananas personal enmity — Catherine Cumming, stairgate, the Tim Smith of it all.

He has been able to eke out, among the major papers, a single profoundly grudging endorsement, from The Age, while The Australian Financial Review and the Herald Sun manage to overlook the staggeringly dire state of the Victorian Liberal Party enough to recommend them for government.

Surely it’s more than just conservatism to overlook not just weirdo candidates, preferencing advocates of political violence, increasingly powerful fringe voices, but that the party is a relentless scandal generator. Consistent, avoidable and profoundly stupid scandals. If they were put in charge of the arms of state, they’d presumably use them to continue punching themselves in the face.

That Andrews barrels through all of this, that he will almost certainly be returned as premier in the face of it all, is of course a big part of his appeal to those who adore him, the same indefatigable fortitude that saw him front the media for 120 straight days throughout lockdown, staying until no one had another question.

After things wrap up, I’m waiting to be guided back to my shoes, and Andrews walks past. “Hi, how are you” he says, with no implication of a question mark. Looking ahead, addressing everyone in the vicinity and no one in particular, he doesn’t break stride.