Daniel Andrews puts colleagues who don’t agree with him into ‘Dan’s freezer’ – refusing to take their calls or answer text messages, an explosive new book claims.
Sumeyya Ilanbey’s biography, simply titled Daniel Andrews, reveals the story behind his rise from ‘factional hack’ to Victorian leader and the ‘scandals and dramas’ along the way.
Labor insiders shed extraordinary light on Mr Andrews’ relationship with his then-NSW counterpart Gladys Berejiklian, his ‘ruthlessness’ as a ‘command-and-control’ leader – and reveal he planned to quit ahead of the upcoming state election.
Daily Mail Australia contacted Mr Andrews for comment on the claims made in the book.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (left) is pictured with his wife Catherine in Fitzroy, Melbourne, Friday, October 22, 2021
‘Dan’s freezer’
Former colleagues of Mr Andrews claim the Victorian premier is ‘loyal to no one but himself’ and that he cuts off his political allies if they don’t see eye-to-eye.
‘When you tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, he freezes you. He won’t call, he may not take their call, might denigrate them in a meeting,’ a Labor insider said.
Ilanbey wrote there was ‘rarely a confrontation’ between Mr Andrews and his colleagues, ‘he just stops returning phone calls’.
‘He never f***ing responds. Never returns a text message unless it’s something that he needs. It’s just hysterical,’ another former colleague said.
Victorian Labor figures can be in ‘Dan’s freezer’ for weeks, months – or even years, according to the book.
‘No one has been spared from the freezer – not even those who have shown him the greatest loyalty,’ Ilanbey wrote.
She claimed Mr Andrews has a unique ability to ‘steamroll’ anyone who tries to oppose his ‘vision for government’.
‘His is a command-and-control leadership … Daniel Andrews runs everything. The power is vested in his, and his inner sanctum’s hands, and those who dare stick their head above the parapet will soon find themselves in the freezer,’ she wrote.
None of the political allies ‘put in the freezer’ are named in the book – nor are there positions.
Covid and Gladys Berejiklian
The gradual ending of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ (right) once-close relationship with his NSW counterpart Gladys Berejiklian (left) is laid bare in a new book
Mr Andrews was furious with the NSW leader, according to the biography, during June 2021 – when the Covid crisis began to spiral out of control in Sydney.
The premiers cooperated at the start of the pandemic when the political opposites tackled what they saw as then prime minister Scott Morrison’s lack of urgency.
On March 13, 2020, a National Cabinet was formed by Australia’s federal, state and territory governments to deal with the pandemic, but it took just nine days for the two biggest states to set their own agenda – closing all but essential services.
But the days of Mr Andrews and Ms Berejiklian working in tandem did not survive an outbreak in Sydney in June 2021 of the more virulent Deltra strain of Covid-19.
Mr Andrews berated Ms Berejiklian’s ‘soft approach’ to the new wave of infections during his daily press conferences and called for a ‘ring of steel’ around Sydney to prevent the virus leaking to other states.
But Ms Berejiklian ignored the advice – and was praised by Mr Morrison for doing so – and the disease spread, just as Mr Andrews had warned.
Former minister Martin Pakula, a colleague of Mr Andrews, insisted the relationship between the NSW and Victoria premiers did not completely fall apart, but Mr Andrews was ‘pretty ‘p***ed off’ at the time.
‘I think that was primarily because Daniel felt, understandably, that Victoria had been unnecessarily exposed by the kind of cavalier approach NSW took to Delta in the early days,’ Mr Pakula told Ilanbey.
Plans to step down ditched
Daniel Andrews (left) and Scott Morrison arrive to Remembrance Day 2021 Service at the Shrine of Remembrance, in Melbourne, Thursday, November 11, 2021
One of the most surprising revelations in the book is that Mr Andrews had always planned to step down before the 2022 election.
‘Andrews assumed – based purely on the way modern politics works – he would not have been re-elected for a third term,’ Ilanbey writes.
She says he changed his mind when Labor had such a resounding victory in 2018.
Then ‘he realised he could win a third term and see himself in bronze alongside other long-serving premiers outside Parliament’s Treasury Place’.
‘Scandals and drama’
From the hotel quarantine bungle and branch stacking to the Red Shirts rort, Victorian Labor has been plagued by scandal under the leadership of Mr Andrews.
‘There are scandals and dramas (the Premier) should have avoided, and if he had been thinking, he would have,’ one former Labor MP told Ilanbey.
‘He’s been really good at riding out scandals. The question sometimes is should they have been scandals in the first place?’
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (left) is pictured at National Cabinet with then prime minister Scott Morrison (centre) and then NSW premier Glady Berejiklian (right)
Factional brawler
In summing up her heavily researched book, Ilanbey wrote that at times of crisis, Mr Andrews’ has always acted as though there’s nothing to see.
‘And then, when things get really tough, he reverts to his roots as a factional brawler: fierce and unforgiving,’ she said.
But she wrote that his time as premier may be up in the Victorian state election on November 26.
‘These defining qualities of Andrews, who has always balanced ideology with an acute sense of what the mainstream will tolerate, may yet be the Achilles heel that enables the fall of his government.’
Daniel Andrews by Sumeyya Ilanbey, published by Allen & Unwin, is available in bookshops and online now
Sumeyya Ilanbey’s new book, Daniel Andrews (pictured) is available now in bookshops and for download
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