For his supposed sins, Jesus died on the cross at 3 pm. Crucified by the mob, a crown of thorns on his head, the King of the Jews succumbed. ‘It is finished,’ he said.

In Victoria, some 2,000 years later, Premier Daniel Andrews gave up his crown as the state leader at 1.30 pm, crucified not on a cross, but on a self-made mountain of political baggage. ‘It is time,’ he said.

The Political Gospel according to Dan will be strewn with slippery commentary, saccharine condescension, and a reference to those who dared oppose him as ‘irrelevant’.

The messianic Victorian Premier dealt the state a tsunami of political plagues among which looms a $226 billion debt by 2026 and a view from outsiders that the state rips up contracts on a whim.

Yet what has been an immovable ALP mountain for 9 years almost came tumbling down in the post-Andrews hours of September 26, 2023.

In the absence of Andrews’ discipline-via-fear, the party turned to chaos in the vote for his replacement. It revealed a vulnerable underbelly to a party that might just be a one-man show after all.

Andrews’ disciples are now left to make sense of what happened.

They will do so under the guidance of his favourite apostle, Jacinta Allan, the new Premier of Victoria.

Ms Allan was elected as the Member for Bendigo East in 1999.

In fluoro-camouflage, she smiles for the cameras but is no saint.

As Daniel Andrews’ deputy, she has nodded at his every decision, applauded his acid tongue, no doubt cheered on his every ‘I don’t recall’ moment in Inquiries. But the $226 billion debt is equally hers – and perhaps more so as the Minister for the ‘Big Build’.

As the Minister for the Commonwealth Games, and a member of Andrews’ handpicked Covid Gang of Eight, her political weight is like lead amongst the people. A North Face jacket may not be enough to win her over to the masses. They will not forget.

Nor have I forgotten an interview I did as a young television journalist about 23 years ago with the new female Labor MP in Bendigo. The subject matter escapes me, but I remember asking Ms Allan the same question five times. She obfuscated, danced about, and ignored the real matter. So, I asked the question again. And again, and again, and again.

I gave up and walked away reminding myself to never forget what happened. I have watched her closely since. Little has changed.

Ms Allan was allegedly a recipient of Labor’s Red Shirts rort, according to the 2018 IBAC report, where Labor used taxpayers’ money to fund campaign staff in the lead-up to the 2014 state election.

For 40 days, a good biblical number, Ms Allan was apparently provided a campaign staffer paid for by another Labor MP, the details of which are also listed in the 2018 IBAC report. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on Ms Allan’s part.

While the Party paid back the total $387,842 identified in the Ombudsman’s report, the stench of something rotten in the Labor Party remains.

Ms Allan is a member of the Labor Party’s Socialist Left faction – the same as Daniel Andrews. This is the faction that accepted the branch memberships of dead people, as reported here, here, and here.

The IBAC investigation, Operation Watts, looked into Labor Party branch stacking, but confined that investigation to the Right faction of the ALP given the matter was referred by Daniel Andrews.

It is suggested by some that he may have wanted his nemesis, then Labor MP Adem Somyurek, to feel political pain. He did, but survived to tell the Parliament of Victoria in February 2022 that walking into a Government Department was like walking into an ALP State Conference. He said, ‘Looking at a list of departmental heads … is like looking at a Labor party branch list. It is amazing. It needs to stop. This is where you have corruption creeping into your system. This is where corruption takes hold.’

The State Ombudsman, Deborah Glass, is currently investigating Andrews’ politicisation of the bureaucracy.

Jacinta Allan has all this to deal with.

As a member of Andrews’ Gang of Eight – she cannot run from the Covid lockdown burdens she imposed upon Victorians.

Andrews’ sophistry hit great heights upon the announcing of Lockdown 5 on July 16, 2021. ‘We have no choice’, he said. There were 18 cases of Covid in Victoria on that winter’s day. Today, nearly three million cases of the virus have been counted in Victoria, and nearly 12 million across Australia.

‘We have no choice’ was just a political statement – barely informed by either science or medical expertise. Instead, it was brimming with $2 million worth of Labor-aligned polling.

Like the Red Shirts rort, Jacinta Allan benefitted politically from the QDOS polling. It provided her, and her Premier, the weasel words to forge the perception of Labor’s leaders as our saviours.

Ms Allan will also inherit the Premier’s Private Office, the PPO, a bureaucratic monument to Mr Andrews.

The 44th Victorian Premier, Labor’s Steve Bracks, held office between 1999 and 2007 and did so with 10 policy advisers and two media officers. But in Daniel Andrews’ PPO, the ranks swelled to 87 advisers, greater than the 71 Labor MPs in the House. Add to this almost 290 ministerial and MP staff.

The PPO falls outside the public service, is not subject to Freedom of Information requests and is not accountable to the Parliament.

We should not forget that Jacinta Allan was there for all the Premier’s socially ‘progressive’ reforms.

This includes the legal requirement in Victoria to affirm a child’s decision to undertake gender transitioning. A failure to affirm could result in a parent or carer going to jail.

Being female will satisfy the Woke ranks for a while, but Jacinta Allan has a lot of work to do.

Firstly, she needs to calm the Labor seas that have revealed themselves as rough waters.

She rises to the top through political air thick with the stench of secrecy and a breeze of financial crisis blowing ever stronger.

You can be sure she will be there to reveal the bronze statue of Daniel Andrews to recognise his 3,000-plus days as Premier.

He is not old, and his ego is intact despite the wreckage he leaves behind.

Like NSW Premier, Bob Carr, we should not rule out that Andrews might have his eyes on the national horizon. His former roommate, friend and fellow socialist, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, may appreciate Andrews’ insolence within his ranks.

Just like Jacinta Allan, Andrews might be in the wings for a bigger job.

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