Daniel Andrews continues to dominate the News Corp headlines one year after leaving office, writes Belinda Jones.
FORMER VICTORIAN PREMIER, Daniel Andrews AC, has garnered headlines and trended on social media once again, albeit from obscurity.
Since retiring one year ago on 27 September 2023, Andrews has done nothing of note to deserve such attention. He’s played a little golf and registered a couple of companies. He received a Companion of the Order of Australia from the King — just the usual retirement stuff.
Andrews quashed speculation of returning to the public sector, possibly via a diplomatic posting, when he told journalists in September 2023:
“I’ve spent a long time in the public sector. I think it’s highly unlikely that I’ll spend too much more time there”.
Andrews has remained a private citizen since leaving office.
For some reason though, Andrews has regularly been in the News Corp media’s spotlight — his name and image have regularly occupied the attention of News Corp journalists, commentators, and editors.
On this occasion, Andrews is in the headlines because he is to be immortalized in a bronze statue.
Former Liberal Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, introduced statues for any Victorian premier who serves for longer than 3000 days. In hindsight, Kennett's now having second thoughts and a sook behind some News Corp paywall.
Of course, the Andrews statue announcement drew both congratulations from supporters and outrage from Andrews’ political adversaries. Some of the minority of Victorian voters who didn’t vote for Andrews in his three consecutive Victorian state election victories vented their feelings on social media.
The shock jocks were triggered.
It fired up the “cookers”, those COVID conspiracy theorists who deny themselves the joy of living in the present because they’re stuck in 2020 and seem to have little desire to move on.
News Corp journalists resurrected their COVID-era personas and penned pieces throughout the News Corp media opining on the injustice of it all — the statue, the AC, the golf.
Dan was probably just doing some putting practice or polishing his new medal while all this was happening, who knows?
The remainder of Victoria was just getting on with it, preparing for the AFL Grand Final this afternoon.
The fact so many are triggered by a statue of the former Premier explains why Andrews still dominates the headlines – he gets a bite, he sells newspapers, he gets clicks, he makes News Corp money.
News Corp ain’t going to give that cash cow up in a hurry!
Hence why Dan Andrews lives rent-free in News Corp journalists' and commentators' heads, and why they continue to stoke over the dying coals of the pandemic – and the Andrews’ era – month after month.
Headlines rehash the lockdowns to remind people how difficult times were. As they did daily at the height of the COVID pandemic – with relentless negativity – that certainly didn’t help those struggling most with the situation.
News Corp wants Australians to be bickering and arguing, feeling miserable and divided – but mostly, uninformed.
All for clicks.
Just like old COVID times.
COVID tensions were also reignited this week when the AFL's entertainment line-up for this year’s Grand Final was revealed. Superstar Katy Perry will be joined by Australian singing icon, Tina Arena, in the MCG spectacular.
Arena soon trended on social media, with many sharing their memories of an outspoken Arena during the height of the lockdowns and a confession of breaking the rules. Arena was no fan of Dan’s so it’s highly likely that she’s no fan of his statue either.
There were reminders of the time when then-Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, appointed Arena to the Australia Council board – now known as Creative Australia – in 2019.
Arena resigned from the Australia Council board in 2023 citing work commitments after attending ‘less than half of its board meetings’.
In somewhat colourful and definitive language, social media users expressed their disapproval of the AFL’s choice of support act for the U.S. superstar.
Both these COVID-related episodes illustrate that despite Melbourne thriving and bustling with an abundance of life and vitality well over four years on from the start of the pandemic — the raw emotional wounds of the pandemic have not yet healed for so many.
Those emotions continue to be manipulated and exploited daily by News Corp for clicks — to retraumatize a population trying desperately to move on from a very difficult time.
News Corps' non-stop negative narrative is designed to grind Australians into despair and victimhood. For some unknown reason, News Corp doesn’t seem to want Australians to be happy, positive or hopeful.
It doesn’t really matter which issue you pick that’s in the headlines – energy, groceries, climate, education, health – whatever it is News Corp will platform the negative narrative, the doomsday scenarios every single time.
They’ll interview politicians who have the gall to demand the Albanese Government do in three years all the things they never did in nine years.
Commentators and journalists will twist their negativity into political ammunition to fire at will in political interviews, rarely, if ever, stopping to think about the consequences of their low journalistic standards on society as a whole.
Many find that constant barrage of negativity physically and mentally exhausting. The constant whinging day-in-day-out about virtually nothing — making mountains out of molehills instead of doing actual journalism.
News Corp seems quite determined to make their readers and viewers as miserable as their commentators and journalists are, presumably because happy people are more difficult to manipulate and exploit.
Living with that level of negativity is simply exhausting for anyone’s brain — it impersonates accurate, factual content that informs.
News Corp newspapers have become far more paper than news — far more corporation than news.
Tedious, repetitive, unnewsworthy, boring and uninformative clickbait.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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