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Nowhere Dan: What’s with Andrews’ new beachy life? · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: It's Friday, October 9, 2026. He was Premier for nine years,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: a buddy to the billionaires and still a household name today.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: But Dan Andrews is toxic for his Victorian Labor Party
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: and living in a giant house he doesn't own on
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: the Mornington Peninsula. Today, the mystery of what's going on
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: with Daniel Andrews.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Other than a few solo walks on the beach, he
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: really wasn't seen by any of the people that I
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: spoke to. I spoke to neighbours, I spoke to cafe
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  Speaker 3: owners and restaurant owners and they hadn't seen him.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: They didn't know that he lived there.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: This is The Australian's roving reporter, Liam Mendes. He tracked
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Andrews down on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula where the memory of
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the world's longest lockdown has yet to fade.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: A lot of people in Mornington Peninsula don't actually like
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  Speaker 3: Mr Andrews. There's roadsides that have been scribbled FU Dan
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: around the place. And a lot of that has to
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: do with COVID. The Mornington Peninsula were no different to
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: the Melbourne CBD. So a lot of those houses there
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: are very close to the water. When you've got a
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: five kilometre radius and you're living near the water, that
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: limits where you can really go by about 50%. So
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: you can understand why there's so much animosity.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Dan Andrews resigned as Premier in 2023 after nearly nine years.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: His legacy endures.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Victoria's COVID response, the giant big build infrastructure scheme and
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Australia's first state treaty with First People. And now a
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Royal Commission into allegations of construction corruption, a debt bomb,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: sky-high taxes and crumbling roads. Labor's still in government, just,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: and heading to an election on November 28.
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  Speaker 1: But Dan is well and truly on the outer.
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  Speaker 3: He's living in this beautiful multi, multi-million dollar home. And
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  Speaker 3: there's a lot of secrecy surrounding this. And the reason
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  Speaker 3: why it is sort of so interesting is that the
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  Speaker 3: people who own this home are pretty big labour donors
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  Speaker 3: and had a fair bit of involvement in the property
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  Speaker 3: construction sector in the time where Mr Andrews was the
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Premier of Victoria.
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  Speaker 2: The house's owners are labour donors, but some of those
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: gifts were made as something called split donations, where various
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: entities are used to hand over money.
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  Speaker 1: It's not illegal. But the practice does create a lack
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of transparency, according to the state's anti-corruption watchdog IBAC.
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  Speaker 3: Mr Andrews is receiving a pension in the hundreds of
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: thousands of dollars a year. That's from Victorian taxpayers. It's
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: not clear whether he's paying rent to be living in
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  Speaker 3: this property, which is owned by property developers who had
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: a lot of business done. There was one large property
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  Speaker 3: that I found that during his tenure was received ministerial
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: approval to go above the levels that they could build
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  Speaker 3: in the certain council that they were.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Building this property in.
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  Speaker 3: Miss Andrews has come out and said that he had
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: no dealings with that. That was the planning minister that
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: had to do with those approvals at the time. But
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  Speaker 3: it just adds on to the murkiness of this. This
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  Speaker 3: is the longest running Labor premier in Victoria.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Anthony Galloway is the Australian's Victorian political editor and he
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: was involved with Liam in the reporting on Dan Andrews'
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: mysterious new life. Anthony, I don't want to be too
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: discriminatory about Victorian beaches, but this looks like an awfully
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: kind of dystopian, bleak, windswept existence to me.
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  Speaker 1: What's the appeal of the Mornington Peninsula?
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  Speaker 4: Oh, the Mornington Peninsula is a lovely place.
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  Speaker 5: It just looks like Daniel Andrews wants to lead a
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: very solitary life.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Life these days.
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  Speaker 5: I guess people in Labor, when they saw the story,
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  Speaker 5: kind of questioned, you know, why do you have to
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  Speaker 5: live in this huge fortress-like mansion that's worth, I think,
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  Speaker 5: over $ 6 million? Why can't you just live in a
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: normal house? There's plenty of normal houses on the Morningston Peninsula, right?
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  Speaker 5: So as with everything with Daniel Andrews, it's where the
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  Speaker 5: optics and the judgment are really called into question. You know,
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  Speaker 5: I think the average Victorian, the average Australian has nothing
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  Speaker 5: wrong with a billionaire living living in a house like that.
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  Speaker 5: But Daniel Andrews probably can't afford a house like that.
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  Speaker 5: So why does he feel the need to live in
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  Speaker 5: that kind of mansion? And it really kind of underscores
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  Speaker 5: this extent to which Andrews, as soon as he started
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: kind of going up the Labor ladder and then becoming
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  Speaker 5: opposition leader, really ingratiated himself with the top end of
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: town in Melbourne, you know, your Lindsay Foxes and the like.
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  Speaker 5: He seemed to really be obsessed with billionaires in a
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  Speaker 5: way that we haven't quite seen any previous labour. So
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  Speaker 5: while he had this very strained relationship with the business
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  Speaker 5: community more generally, he had a really close relationship with
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  Speaker 5: the absolute top end of town.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's most famous, I suppose, throughout the rest of
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Australia for his very censorious and bossy press conferences in
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: which he lectured Victorians about not enjoying themselves too much
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: or at all while working under the world's longest lockdown.
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  Speaker 1: You won't be able to go to the pub because
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the pub is shut.
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  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean you can have all your mates round
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  Speaker 2: to home and get on the beers. That must have
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  Speaker 2: surely annoyed the business community. I mean, it was business
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: who wanted things to get back to normal, certainly small business.
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  Speaker 2: Why has, in his post-political life, do you think the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: business community or property developers embraced Dan Andrews?
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  Speaker 5: Well, like I said, it's that really upper end of
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  Speaker 5: the business community. It's your billionaires that Daniel was always
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  Speaker 5: close to, not your millionaires. So it's the people that
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: are so rich that it didn't really, you know, it
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  Speaker 5: wasn't existential for them in any way like it was
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: for so many small and medium business owners in Victoria
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  Speaker 5: when you're talking about the world's longest lockdown.
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  Speaker 6: Melbourne is today in its 235th day of shutdown since
• 6:40
  Speaker 6: the pandemic began, officially making it the city to have
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: endured lockdowns the world's longest lockdown.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, the other thing to say is, you know,
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  Speaker 5: in defence of Andrews, he probably doesn't care what people
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  Speaker 5: think about him. He doesn't seem to be interested in
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: legacy building in the way that pretty much all former
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: leaders are. You know, he's currently having his legacy dismantled
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: by the current Premier Ben Carroll, whether it's scaling back
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: the suburban railway, whether it's cancelling a statue of Andrews.
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: Whether it's Carroll really being scathing.
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  Speaker 5: Of Andrew's conduct when he was doing a pay deal
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: with the United Firefighters Union, which was subject of quite
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: a critical IBAC report at the anti-corruption body a few
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: months ago.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: So, you know, he doesn't seem to, you know, at least.
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  Speaker 5: Publicly, he's not entering the debate in any way like
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: you see former leaders normally do if their legacy is
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: being tarnished or dismantled.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's nothing as X as an ex-premier.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Usually the people who are left behind to either clean
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: up the mess or to try and rebuild their own
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: power base, I suppose, don't want to have anything to
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: do with the former leader.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: But Jacinta Allen did. I mean, we know they spoke,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: my understanding is basically weekly. They were very close friends.
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: And Jacinta Allen was advised by Victorian Labor that Andrews
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: since he had left the premiership, was toxic among Victorians.
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  Speaker 5: There was kind of this lag in terms of, you know,
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: a lot of what he did during COVID and a
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: lot of those kinds of questions around integrity. She was
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: advised time and time again, differentiate yourself from Andrews, which
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: because she was close to the guys, she was incapable
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: of doing. And Ben Carroll's now trying to do that
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: with a few months till the election. So he's really
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: doing what Jacinta Allen should have done two, three years ago.
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  Speaker 4: Even when Daniel.
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: Andrews went to China to the military parade and got
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: a class photo with the world's despots, including Vladimir Putin
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: and Kim Jong-un, she couldn't bring herself to just say
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: that was a bit off, where Carol, then Deputy Premier,
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: was quite critical of that and basically alleged that Daniel
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: Andrews was doing that for his current business purposes, which
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: he said was quite off.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, you have to.
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: The question for Ben Carroll is, is it far too late?
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: And the Victorians look at this as quite a cynical exercise.
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  Speaker 1: Let me make one thing very clear.
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  Speaker 4: I am not Daniel Andrews. I am not Jacinta Rowland.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that appearance of the Victory Parade in
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Beijing in 2025 was one of the only times we've
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: seen Dan Andrews in public, apart from Liam's photographs of
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: him wandering around on the Mornington Peninsula. Does that give
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: us some clues as to what he's actually up to
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: and what do we know about what his life involves
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: in terms of making money?
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Like how is he making a living?
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so he started two businesses since he left the premiership.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: One of them is he's co-owned with his former chief
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: China advisor, Marty May.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: So we know that a lot of.
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  Speaker 5: His business activities involve getting market access into China for
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: Australian companies and vice versa. representing Chinese business interests in Australia.
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: We know two of his clients Andrew Forrest or Fortescue,
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: as well as Anthony Pratt. But other than that, we
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: don't know much about these businesses. They don't have any
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: kind of public-facing websites or anything of that. So there's
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: not much to be said because we just don't know. But,
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, to go back to that question about optics before,
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, Daniel Andrews visited China so many times as Premier,
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: never took the media. And he always said it was,
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: you know, he was doing it in Victoria's interest. But
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: his internal critics always suspected, are you just setting yourself
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: up for post-politics?
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: Now, most leaders might, you know, wait a little.
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  Speaker 5: While before setting up a business that's all about representing
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: Chinese business interests.
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  Speaker 4: He didn't wait long at all. He did it immediately.
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  Speaker 5: So like everything with Andrews, he kind of raises these
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: questions about people's kind of worst fears about him. So,
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: you know, we can't necessarily prove any nefarious wrongdoing here,
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: but he just doesn't do himself any favours with the
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: way he conducts himself.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: This is an absolute gift for the Victorian Liberals and
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: for One Nation who are coming very hard after seats
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: in Victoria. Have they been able to use the Dan
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Andrews factor to their gain?
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: Oh, I mean, the research of both Liberals and Labor
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  Speaker 5: say that any mention of Dan Andrews now is not
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: helpful for Victorian Labor. You know, Victorian Labor has confirmed
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: to me that Andrews will have no role in the
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: upcoming state election campaign, but neither would Andrews want to
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: have a role And a One Nation candidate controversially said
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: at a campaign launch on the weekend that if One
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: Nation win, Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allen would be in
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: jail by Christmas. And that got a thunderous applause from
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: the One Nation supporters in the room.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: It's very lock her up, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton vibes. Yeah.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I find that quite problematic.
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: I don't think Australia should be moving to a democracy where,
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: you know, you not only lose the election but you
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: get chucked in jail.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Afterwards for good measure.
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: So Jess Wilson isn't going that far because she's kind
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: of running as the serious alternative Premier. But, yeah, she
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: mentions Jacinta Allen and Daniel Andrews whenever she can as
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: well and reminds voters of that legacy just because, yeah, it.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: Is helpful for them.
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: The polls are showing Ben Carroll is a lot more
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: popular than Jacinta Allen, but he hasn't managed to lift
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: that primary vote in any way. So the more that
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: the Liberals kind of remind voters that, of Alan and Andrews,
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: the better, I think.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Anthony.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Anthony Galloway is The Australian's Victorian political editor and Leah
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Mendez is our reporter at large. You can read all
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the action from the run-up to Victoria's state election anytime
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: at theaustralian.com.au.