A broken record couldn’t be so familiar.

In front of the cameras, the Victorian Premier’s song is now a chorus of repeat lyrics.

These lyrics include a mix of the following: ‘I don’t recall!’ ‘I have no recollection of that!’ ‘That’s not how I remember it…’ That’s Side A.

Side B has the popular tunes of: ‘That man found no corruption,’ ‘I’m accountable for everything,’ ‘I don’t accept that!’ and the very popular, ‘We’re getting things done.’

Remix and repeat. Scratch the record again and keep flipping.

It is the Dan Andrews ‘Unforgettable Collection’. The stuff of legend.

Now four times secretly interviewed by the Victorian Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission, IBAC, the Victorian Premier never forgets his lines in the political pantomime he has personally penned.

The findings of IBAC’s Operation Daintree are extraordinary.

It was an investigation into a state government contract with the Health Workers Union. The overall cost was $3.3 million paid to the union to deliver workplace training to hospital staff on how to deal with violence.

Forget the fact that the HWU was not a registered training organisation at the time, according to this report in The Age. Forget the fact that the bulk of the training was not delivered as intended, with just 83 of 575 staff between October 2018 and March 2020 being instructed. Of those, 80 per cent ‘believed the trainers did not have in-depth knowledge of occupational violence and aggression, nor were they providing a program that was relevant to the health sector’.

IBAC found that in 2018 the Premier’s Private Office and staff from the Health Minister’s office ‘breached their ethical obligations’ when they pressured the Department of Health and Human Services to award the union the training contract. IBAC said, ‘The union was given privileged access and favourable treatment,’ and that ‘…these failings and unethical conduct resulted in a contract that should not have been entered into.’

It did not say that it involved corruption or corrupt conduct.

But did it ever ask where all the money ultimately ended up?

Newspaper reports have described the findings as a ‘damning assessment of the centralisation of power under the Premier’s watch’ and the ‘significant erosion’ of ministerial accountability.

IBAC took evidence from a former Health Minister, Jenny Mikakos, the same minister the Premier blamed for the Hotel Quarantine debacle. She told IBAC that the contract looked like a ‘way…of injecting funds into the HWU’. She told IBAC the Premier’s office was interfering in the contract process.

Mikakos told IBAC that ‘…the Westminster tradition of ministerial responsibility was meaningless when ministers and their staff could be directed by others in government as to how to oversee their departments.’

Since then, it has further diminished following a recent departmental shakeup, with departments reporting to multiple Ministers. It’s finger-pointing heaven floating on a cloud of no responsibility.

Her replacement Minister, Jill Hennessy, told IBAC that the increasing size of the Premier’s Private Office ‘…reflected a greater centralisation that has occurred in government.’

Mikakos said the Premier’s office has ‘…its tentacles everywhere.’ IBAC found the numbers to back that up, noting the ‘seven to eight’ policy advisors 20 years ago under Steve Bracks, and now 10 times that under Daniel Andrews. 2021 figures put the number at 286 across all ministries.

It’s data, and it’s damning.

Some critics say it smells of corruption – grey corruption apparently – rather than the black and white variety.

But isn’t that how Daniel Andrews sings his songs, his wooing lullabies to the people of Victoria?

He confounds. He says the problem is X when it’s actually Y.

Anyone watching his post-IBAC media performance would have wondered why IBAC even bothered wasting everyone’s time. As the Premier said, no big deal, it was only an ‘educational report’.

Yes it was. Highly instructive.

He said there were 17 recommendations, and he would ‘lead a Cabinet process to consider those’.

Anyway, the people who were involved in the whole shenanigans don’t even work for the government anymore, including the two Health Ministers. What are we worried about?

‘I can’t change what happened 4-5 years ago,’ he said.

No, he can’t. But he could have at the time.

He went on to croon, ‘I’m always accountable for everything that happens in the government.’ That is, of course, until he tells IBAC, that he ‘doesn’t recall’.

So, it goes like this: he’s absolutely accountable for everything – but he just can’t remember everything for which he is accountable.

He palmed off the report’s strong Shakespearean sentiment that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Such concerns were simply ‘sweeping statements’.

‘As for the centralisation of power? We’re about getting things done,’ the Premier said.

So – a double scoop of blancmange babble is his response to an incredibly serious report.

The old hits of ‘I don’t recall’, ‘I disagree’, ‘Busy outfit’, and ‘I’m accountable’ will hit the Top of the Pops again as his social media goes into overdrive.

Daniel Andrews will get a bronze statue to mark his 3,000 days as Premier.

It will stand as a tribute to his Golden Oldies, the tunes he rattles out with puffs of smoke from the wings and with lyrics, like most, that confuse the crowd that cheers on regardless.

His next album should be ‘Daniel Andrews: Angel. Always was. Always will be.’

However, IBAC itself is ‘on trial’ here and it can’t just be a paper tiger.

Bev is also a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, PAEC.

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