CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The resignation of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was an unexpected grenade thrown into this week’s news cycle, as his opponents in the Australian media had to rapidly scrap every news story they had planned for today’s front page – and focus on the Labor leader’s career change.
Andrews held a snap press conference where he announced he will step down from the role of premier and as member for Mulgrave at 5pm tomorrow.
The outgoing premier said while he is proud of his legacy, it will be for others to judge – and it’s already quite obvious that he will be judged harshly by the Murdoch media who have been absolutely humiliated by the fact that they couldn’t do anything to weaken his 9-year reign daily character assassinations and misinformation campaigns on Sky News and the Herald Sun.
However, this week of all weeks was meant to be one of those rare news cycles that didn’t mention politics once – as the NewsCorp rags focus on the Australian Football League grand final, a sporing competition that has been traditionally used as a trojan horse to deliver right-wing propaganda into the brains of Victorian voters.
Unfortunately for Melbourne conservative political and media class, their crucial AFL final coverage has been bumped to the middle of their ailing newspapers – Thanks to Dan Andrews’s well timed declaration just 5 days out from the Big Dance.
While they had wanted to see him out of a job for four years, the fact that the Victorian Premier gets to leave office on his own terms has enraged the news editors within the right-wing media monopoly – who have printed 1056 front page stories calling for him to be drawn and quartered outside Flinders Street Station.
Not only that, but his uneventful departure from state politics will also dominate headlines this week, and weaken the Murdoch families grip on the minds of low-information swing-voters who only really want to read about Collingwood’s grand final preparations with a little bit of trickle-down fascism sprinkled on top.
For Dan Andrews, however, this final shot at the Liberal Party’s media arm at the Herald Sun is just a sweetener – before he sits back in retirement and watches the limping Murdoch empire continue to prove how little influence they actually have over a state who cares a lot more about aged care and housing than transphobic conspiracies and fictional stories about African gangs.
