Melbourne is now bigger than Sydney, and Victoria has grown by 1 million people and continues to be the most densely populated state in the country. 

Dan, the progressive from the socialist left faction of the Labor Party, has a record of progressive social policy ranging from Victoria being the first state to legalise voluntary assisted dying, decriminalising sex work and starting treaty negotiations with First Australians. 

The Bad

Dictator Dan, as known to his many critics, has many controversies to his name. As Premier, outlets have remembered him as the ‘controversial’ Premier Daniel Andrews. He was so unpopular in every election he won, that he did so with an even more significant margin than the last. Despite being the Newscorp pariah for allowing safe-injecting rooms and voluntary assisted dying, Dan brushed them aside and spoke directly to his now one million Facebook followers, 443,000 X (nee Twitter) followers and 223,000 Instagram followers. 

Journalists across the political spectrum point to Dan’s refusal to conduct regular one-on-one interviews. Virginia Trioli said on Media Watch that it was a “total cold war, and it seemed you only got the premier if you cut a deal about what you would or wouldn’t ask.” Neil Mitchel from 3AW didn’t get the premier on his show for six years and called him an “autocrat.”

Numerous other scandals unfolded during Dan’s tenure, such as the “red shirts”’ scandal of 2014, harsh public housing tower lockdowns and the debt levels now at $135.5 billion, the highest of any state, but at least there’s now less level crossings!. The Commonwealth Games were also due to be held in Victoria in 2026, across regional areas, which would see new sporting infrastructure in lovely Ballarat, Geelong, Bendigo and Gippsland .Now even if you think the Commonwealth Games are just a shitty Olympics for countries with the pleasure of being colonised by the UK, you can still be mad that the Victorian taxpayer will pay hundreds of millions to the organisers because Dan couldn’t stomach putting on the thing. 

Then there was COVID-19. Dan did lockdowns like no one else in the world. Between March 2020 and October 2021, Victorians, but mostly Melbournians, spent 267 days in lockdown, more than any other city in the world, including the mammoth 111-day lockdown from July 8 to October 27 2020. While the anti-vaxxers with upside-down Australian flags couldn’t take Andrews down, The Herald Sun, quite audaciously, chose to publish a story claiming that instead, some stairs in the Morning Peninsula “took down” the Premier. Andrews was severely injured following this incident but returned to the role of Premier after recovering.

“Can anyone tell me what the point of this story is? Anyone?…

Are you going to interview the stairs next ?”@DanielAndrewsMP response 👏👏👏👏👏

to this 👇 pic.twitter.com/WHslARRBaE

— Julia Banks (@juliahbanks) November 6, 2022

The Ugly

To conclude, Dan was the Premier for a bloody long time. The guy built shit and passed a bunch of legislation, but he paid for it without raising hella taxes, so the debt looks really bad on paper. In the long term, he will go down as a successful politician who built stuff and showed how you can be progressive but be electable as long as you build stuff and keep your message simple and to the point. Lastly, though, his most important legacy will be telling Victorians to just get on the beers, so cheers for that, Dan.