Do we like them?

Do we like Daniel Andrews?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A strong record on LGBTQ+ protections and no harmful words found, but a strongman style and a Games call the Auditor-General said rested on overstated costs.

Andrews was born in 1972 to Bob and Jan Andrews, who ran a milk bar in Melbourne's north. The family lost almost everything in a fire and moved to Wangaratta in 1983. He went to Galen Catholic College, then Monash University, and joined Labor in 1993.

From there he crashed through the ranks: state organiser in 1999, MP for Mulgrave in 2002, cabinet under Steve Bracks, and Labor leader at 38 in 2010. He won government in 2014 and again in 2018 and 2022, becoming Victoria's longest-serving Labor premier. Political historian Paul Strangio says his legacy will include big infrastructure and the six COVID lockdowns, and that he tended to barge his way through controversies.

The scandal everyone remembers is Red Shirts, a Labor campaign scheme that used taxpayer-funded electorate staff. IBAC's separate branch-stacking probe reportedly found two of his former ministers breached parliamentary codes, and as reported it made no findings against Andrews himself. Fair or not, it is why critics say he never fully owned the culture around him.

Then came the Commonwealth Games. He cancelled Victoria's hosting of the 2026 event over a forecast cost blowout, and the state Auditor-General later found he and Jacinta Allan had overstated that blowout by more than $2 billion. That is a big call to get that wrong, and it is the clearest case of a decision that cost the public.

On the harm check he comes out well. In 2019 his government announced Victoria would become the first Australian state to ban conversion therapy, a move aimed squarely at protecting LGBTQ+ people. We found no harmful words of his own and no pattern of harmful company. The gap is that we could not fully check his climate and voting record, so we are not claiming a perfect sweep.

The latest stoush is the statue. A rule dating to Jeff Kennett's era gives premiers with more than 3,000 days a bronze, and the $134,000 price tag landed during a cost-of-living squeeze. Opposition Leader Jess Wilson said he had “basically bankrupted the state”, while Labor said he never stopped fighting for working people. Carroll then repealed the policy, though reports differ on what happens to the already-commissioned bronze.