The Murdoch press made no secret of wanting Daniel Andrews out of power, but they may just miss covering the Victorian premier they labelled “Dictator Dan”. After all, he gave them a plethora of memorable headlines – including Danslide when he won the second of three elections in 2018.
Many a Herald Sun front page was built around a disdain for Andrews, particularly during the Covid lockdown of Melbourne. But the Labor politician made great tabloid fodder.
Material included everything from a fall down the stairs which broke his back, a car crash involving his wife, to decisions to remove level crossings and allow assisted dying and a safe injecting room. And he cancelled the Commonwealth Games.
The premier’s reputation as “Dictator Dan” hardened during Covid when media critics said his strict lockdowns were ruining the economy and a quarantine bungle gave them ample ammunition. The Herald Sun delivered the verdict “You Failed Victoria” in one headline about hotel quarantine policy in 2020.
The anti-Dan press was not confined to the state of Victoria. Over the border in New South Wales, News Corp’s Daily Telegraph was no fan either. The Sydney paper devoted its front page to Andrews on more than one occasion, with headlines such as “It’s God-Dan disgraceful”, “Dan-made disaster”, “Victoria bitter” and “Bordering on madness”. The Daily Telegraph’s editor Ben English defended his campaign and labelled the premier a “fool”.
There was no greater source of vitriol about Andrews than from Sky News host Peta Credlin, who famously clashed with Andrews at a press conference and later made a “documentary” titled The Cult of Daniel Andrews.
Andrews repeatedly refused to accept her line of questioning, saying: “I’m not going to stand here and have things put to me in an attempt to perhaps have them put to me so often that they become the truth.”
But it didn’t matter what Credlin and her colleagues threw at him, Andrews defied the bad press by winning three elections, convincingly, thereby triggering more irritation and a new nickname – Teflon Dan.
Before his third election win in November last year, the Sunday Herald Sun devoted the front page and inside pages to a rehash of the conspiracy theory surrounding Andrews’ fall down the stairs.
The paper also published front-page stories about a 2013 crash in which the Andrews’ car collided with cyclist Ryan Meuleman, but there was nothing that implicated any wrongdoing.
The stories in the run-up to the election prompted Kevin Rudd to accuse the Herald Sun of “dog-whistling to conspiracy theorists”.
The Australian even took issue with Catherine Andrews after she blocked two News Corp journalists on Twitter. One columnist referred to her as “wife of Dictator Dan”, as well as “Mrs Dan”, and accused her of being a “mean girl” and of “standing by her man” for daring to like positive tweets about her husband.
On Tuesday, reporting that Eddie McGuire received a “huge applause” when he announced Andrews’ resignation at an AFL lunch, the Herald Sun found someone to quote who shared its sentiment. The report quoted an anonymous punter in the room saying: “Don’t let that door hit you on the way out, Dan.”
