The keen Keane went on a rant at Crikey with Dan Andrews’ secret is that he understands Victoria, and his haters don’t... (paywall)
Few political leaders get to leave on their own terms. But Daniel Andrews is one of them, and in high style.
After reversing what now looks like the hiccup that was John Brumby’s 2010 loss, in 2014 he went on to completely dominate Victoria, to the point where the idea of the Victorian opposition even being competitive seems risible. Andrews ripped the heart out of the Victorian Liberals in 2018, and then did it again — despite a swing against him — in 2022.
With Andrews building on the legacy of John Cain and Steve Bracks, by 2026 Labor will have run Victoria for three-quarters of the past 44 years.
Critics — and there are plenty, including Crikey — might argue his dominance was exaggerated by a spectacularly inept Liberal Party divided by an ongoing war between moderate traditional Liberals and Christian extremists whose social views would have been out of touch with Melbourne in 1923, let alone now. But Andrews helped make them unelectable with a ruthless political style, a centralised command-and-control management via his office, and an attitude to the media taken straight from Jeff Kennett, who famously heaved sand at journalists.
That conservatives couldn’t land a punch on Andrews for nearly a decade enraged them, and drove the Coalition’s right-wing cheerleaders at News Corp to distraction. Increasingly frustrated, eventually the Liberals and News Corp openly embraced the kind of lurid conspiracy theories previously the province of far-right extremists. The 2022 election campaign was marked by ferocious News Corp and Liberal attacks on Andrews, with independent MPs and candidates joining in to call for Andrews’ execution. All it did was enhance his reputation as the target of Trump-style political tactics, and convince voters the Liberals — and the Victorian press gallery — were obsessed with Andrews at the expense of real issues.The rage against Andrews was fuelled by his hardline, lockdown-centric tactics in response to the COVID pandemic. Even now, big business and its media cheerleaders at The Australian Financial Review despise him for being so willing to shut the state down. But none of it hurt him. In fact, Andrews’ willingness to place management of the pandemic ahead of the interests of business cannily anticipated where the community was moving.
After three decades of neoliberal elevation of the interests of corporations to primacy in public policymaking, Andrews unapologetically went directly against the demands of business. From the perspective of 2023 — marked by PwC, Qantas and profit-fuelled inflation — this rejection of the diktats of the business community and its media arms looks prescient indeed.
That’s what enraged the right so much about Andrews — that far from being “Dictator Dan” or some out-of-touch leftwinger, he effectively reflected the electorate. Even in 2022, in the face of a swing against him, Andrews steered Labor to a 55% two-party-preferred result. If even a skerrick of the News Corp and Liberal accusations against Andrews were true, such a result should have been impossible...
And so on, and the keen Keane went on to offer some criticisms of comrade Dan, but all the same, the main point stayed solid ... and so the pond was startled to see that this day the lizard Oz still couldn't let go, and had mustered up a demonic snap of the man that enraged them so ... for both the tree killer and digital editions ...
He's a feather duster, just let him go, please, for the love of mercy, bring forth new demons to plague and torment the reptile hive mind ...
Meanwhile, over at the Graudian,
Graham Readfearn drew the pond's attention to an ad in the lizard Oz, which, the pond not being a reader of the tree killer edition, and not understanding how anyone could pay hard shekels to the Chairman for such ancient technology, would otherwise have missed ...
Climate scientists last week said Rupert Murdoch had done more than almost any other person in sowing doubt and confusion about the climate crisis through his outlets.
Over the years climate science deniers mostly haven’t needed to pay to run their screeds in Murdoch’s the Australian newspaper – they just get commissioned to write in the op-ed pages instead.
But on the same day Australia heard Murdoch was stepping down as the chairman of Fox and News Corp, the Australian ran a half-page advertisement of very old-school climate science denial.
The ad was the work of “The Climate Study Group” – a group of men with links to mining, finance and agriculture that includes two former directors of the Institute of Public Affairs. The group has been running occasional ads in the Australian for almost a decade.
The advert, titled “The Carbon Dioxide Climate Myth”, claimed the threat of a climate catastrophe from rising levels of CO2 was “a myth” and dismissed the role CO2 has played in warming the planet and pushing up sea levels. News Corp was approached for comment.
Prof Steve Sherwood, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, described the ad as “a delusional regurgitation of false tropes that have been around for at least 30 years and have been debunked over and over”.
It provided the perfect segue to the infallible Pope of the day ...
Ah, even the pond can't escape the end of the footy season.
And so to the pond's Sophie's choice, with cackling Claire a top of the digital page contender, fighting for a place against the hole in the bucket man's enormous stupidity ...
Actually voting no if you don't know makes no sense at all. If, after careful scrutiny of the matter at hand, and a little diligent research and whatever, you come to a conclusion that your preferred option is ongoing bigotry and punishment of pesky, difficult, uppity blacks, then you can vote no because you think you know ...
The pond thought long and hard about red-carding such a nakedly stupid man, but our Henry is such a deeply learned, erudite and witty man that the pond couldn't resist showing him off ... or at least the most pretentious moments in his posturing ... but he had to be punished in some way, so the pond went gobbet-free ...
...few dangers have figured more prominently in Western thought than those associated with courses of action that are extremely difficult to unwind.
Thucydides, a hardened Athenian general who was neck-deep in the mud of the human condition as it is, rather than as romantics fancied it to be, set the pace with his warning: “No habit is more engrained in mankind than to entrust to careless hope what they long for, while using sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.”
Always quicker to wish than to fear, the protagonists of Thucydides’ history all too readily launched into courses of action from which there was no escape, only to discover that in politics, it is the depths that are yawning, not the heights.
It was with those dangers in mind that Aristotle identified “phronesis” – which Cicero translated as “prudence” (prudentia), a word derived from providentia, “to foresee” – as the “principal virtue of the statesman”. Instead of an endless accumulation of facts, what prudence required was judgment and moderation, tempering boldness by clear-sightedness. And it is a striking indicator of the importance the Greeks attached to that virtue that phronesis’ antonym was “aphrosune”, which means “madness”.
The issue of irreversibility loomed even larger during and after the Reformation, when long-established convictions crumbled.
Tormented by the uncertainty that created, the polymathic philosopher, theologian and mathematician Blaise Pascal, whose quatercentenary we are celebrating this year, proved formally that as the irreversibility and possible costs of a course of action increased, the hurdles it needed to clear before it would be chosen by a rational decision-maker increased exponentially.
Less than a century later, Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes raised those hurdles even higher.
His theorem, which founded the mathematics of inductive logic, showed that if a course of action had failed repeatedly, as have each and every one of the voice’s predecessors, only extraordinarily convincing evidence could give a rational decision-maker the degree of belief needed to recommit to it, much less to do so in perpetuity.
However, that period’s advances in recognising the dangers of irreversibility went far beyond pure mathematics.
There was, most memorably, the ground-breaking statement by Sir Matthew Hale, a formidable scholar who was Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1671 to 1676, that it is “fitter (to) acquit ten guilty persons than condemn one innocent, (for) the loss of the life of an innocent is irreconvertable in this world”.
Faced with the real risk that a decision would inflict irreversible harm, the wise course was to follow the ancient maxim “minus malum toleratur ut maius tollatur” – choose the lesser evil so a greater evil may be averted.
No less ground-breaking was the extension of that maxim to constitutional change. Foreshadowing the extension was David Hume’s observation that reforming a society “‘is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius is able, by mere dint of reason and reflection, to effect it”; instead, reform required “trials and experiments” that could be adjusted or terminated in the light of their outcomes.
Pond readers alarmed at not being given gobbets of our Henry's profound wit and book larnin' will be pleased to know that the remnants of the graphics department fossicked through the free snaps of ancients to illustrate the piece, rustling up snaps of Hume and Burke at no cost to the Chairman's coffers ...
Even this cheap skate, half arsed kind of interruption was appreciated by the pond:
Subsequently re-articulated by Edmund Burke, Hume’s insight was brilliantly translated into constitutional doctrine in The Federalist Papers, where James Madison warned that ill-judged amendments to the Constitution would not just damage “public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions”; they would, if adopted, act as bleeding sores, eroding the “veneration” of the Constitution that was essential for political stability. A very high standard of proof should therefore be met before constitutional change was envisaged and even more so, enacted.
In short, when what is at issue is a potentially dangerous and practically irreversible change in the polity, “if you don’t know, vote no” has been at the heart of the Western canon for centuries.
In short, ignorance is no defence against stupidity ...
9.3 Mistake or ignorance of statute law
(1) A person can be criminally responsible for an offence even if, at the time of the conduct constituting the offence, he or she is mistaken about, or ignorant of, the existence or content of an Act that directly or indirectly creates the offence or directly or indirectly affects the scope or operation of the offence.
Ditto voting. Ignorance is no excuse, when it's easy enough to find out ways to be an informed voter ...
The old bigot ended his rant by celebrating his determined ignorance ...
...denounce me as a reactionary, if you wish; but given the choice, I would rather stick with Thucydides, Aristotle, Cicero, Pascal, Bayes, Hale, Hume, Burke and Madison any day.
Well yes, the pond is pleased to denounce him as a reactionary bigot, dressed up in the plumage of his betters, but actually, it's more the matter of that rich confusion of conservative with ignorance that got the pond going ...
If you happen to think you live in a democracy, and have responsibilities as a citizen, you will appreciate an issue has been put before you, and you will take the little time and trouble involved to learn about the issue, and then vote according to your conscience.
Those ancient Greeks would have expected nothing more or less from their citizens, as noted in the wiki on
Greek democracy ...
Pericles, according to Thucydides, characterized the Athenians as being very well-informed on politics:
We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.
Oh wise Pericles, oh humble transcriber Thucydides, and now we live in an age of lead where pompous, portentous, pretentious blowhards take your names in vain, and besmirch what you offered to the world. Humbug Henry has no business here at all ...
Speaking of the age of lead, the rest of the lizard Oz this day held no interest for the pond ...
There was the craven Craven still fixated on comrade Dan, there was the meretricious Merritt offering humbug dressed up as Martin Luther King, and there was Geoff in his chambers talking about referendum fatigue, when the only fatigue the pond feels is dealing with its daily dose of the reptile hive mind ...
So the pond decided on a rare treat. A diligent reader had sent the pond a link to the Speccie mob, so why not go there for a spring break?
Okay, okay, it's just a troll. Even the Speccie mob thought it was worth a
Shovel style illustration ... speaking of which and noting where the pond started this day...
But no distractions, what an epic troll it is and what a hoot ...
Truly, how did the lizard Oz miss out on this? Why did the mutton Dutton lavish this troll on the Speccie mob?
Heads should roll in the hive mind ... as the mutton Dutton honours the onion muncher's time in uniform defending the country (pity about the bone spurs) ...
It's rare that the pond is disappointed, but such was the literal nature of the fare that when the mutton Dutton got to the third word in his triptych, the flow stopped ...
Please, for anyone expecting the pond to make a comment, forget it. The pond was too busy cackling, and laughing out loud and rolling around on the floor and wiping tears from eyes ...
Who knew that the mutton Dutton was a natural born comedian? Why it was infinitely better than watching a GOP debate ...
And speaking of that debate, the pond should note that Killer had done his duty and reported on it, though it took a little digging to find it ...
The pond only ran with Killer so it could note that of late Charlie Sykes' updates in
The Bulwark have become a splendid way of enjoying breakfast ...
.
The pond did enjoy the X's, and wondered if it should re-brand as Xond ...
It was way better than the Killer illustration ...
And today's Sykes outing was
Actually, We're All a Little Bit Dumber ... and ten years ago if anyone had suggested the pond would be laughing with, rather than at, David Frum, the pond would have ordered that anyone out of the Xond ...
“The problem facing all the aspirants on the Reagan Library stage tonight: Republican primary voters don't care about policy. What they want is a proven record of violent sedition, sexual assault, and financial fraud.” — David Frum
Such weird end times ...
And now back to Killer, calling it for the krook, but not before giving the actual night to Nikki ...
The cartoons have already started to flow featuring that line ...
And so to Killer, calling it for the Krook ...
All that just so the pond could end with the immortal Rowe ...
The pond had thought it a pretty feeble line until Rowe got into the detail ... revealing the small feathers on the duck's paw ...
