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Daniel Andrews: The revealing biography of Australia's most powerful premier
State premiers have risen to national prominence in a way not seen in a half century, with Victoria's Daniel Andrews the most successful. This fascinating biography uncovers the story behind his surprising rise to leadership, and his handling of a period of extraordinary challenge.
He is the most significant Labor figure in Australia since Paul Keating, and the most dominant Victorian premier since Jeff Kennett. He combines Labor's progressive streak with its conservative edge, implementing an infrastructure program and social reforms of a scale unseen in the state since the era of John Cain.
Sumeyya Ilanbey's biography of Daniel Andrews tells the extraordinary story of the factional hack who became premier. She reveals how he defied the conventional political playbook to win back the blue collar vote for Labor, and overcome crises that could have been his downfall. His government imposed some of the longest pandemic lockdowns in the world, yet the more he was attacked for this by opponents, the more his popularity increased.
At a time when state leaders have reversed the long drift of political power towards Canberra, Daniel Andrews is the most successful among them. This is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the breathtaking ruthlessness and masterful control of communications that underpin his leadership.
He is the most significant Labor figure in Australia since Paul Keating, and the most dominant Victorian premier since Jeff Kennett. He combines Labor's progressive streak with its conservative edge, implementing an infrastructure program and social reforms of a scale unseen in the state since the era of John Cain.
Sumeyya Ilanbey's biography of Daniel Andrews tells the extraordinary story of the factional hack who became premier. She reveals how he defied the conventional political playbook to win back the blue collar vote for Labor, and overcome crises that could have been his downfall. His government imposed some of the longest pandemic lockdowns in the world, yet the more he was attacked for this by opponents, the more his popularity increased.
At a time when state leaders have reversed the long drift of political power towards Canberra, Daniel Andrews is the most successful among them. This is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the breathtaking ruthlessness and masterful control of communications that underpin his leadership.
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Published August 30, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 4, 2022
Pretty lacklustre. You’d be better off reading Joel Deane magnificent Catch and Kill and listening to Dan’s appearance on the Socially Democratic Podcast. The author references these sources so many times and covers the same ground.
With Dan’s vindication at the recent election it’s hard to square the cynical portrayal of Andrews with his astounding popularity with the Victorian people.
You’re left with a sense that because she’s spoken to the most bitter and twisted of his opponents, she knows the ‘real Dan’ and the public are just rubes he’s tricked into supporting him.
With Dan’s vindication at the recent election it’s hard to square the cynical portrayal of Andrews with his astounding popularity with the Victorian people.
You’re left with a sense that because she’s spoken to the most bitter and twisted of his opponents, she knows the ‘real Dan’ and the public are just rubes he’s tricked into supporting him.
March 12, 2023
Dan Andrews is the long-standing premier of Victoria, Australia, and the book’s subtitle is ‘The revealing biography of Australia’s most powerful premier’ , but it is less of a biography than a detailed treatment of his time in office. Ilanbey is a journalist working for the main newspaper in the state, and for those who live there, only small aspects of this book would be news they hadn’t known previously. However it is based on detailed investigations and interviews with many people who know Andrews (other than Andrews – it is not an authorised biography). The book brings out strongly the strengths and personality characteristics that have enabled Andrews to win four elections and get so much done in the state but also the negative qualities that have been part of this – the bullying, discarding of colleagues, lack of real accountability when investigations have shown he or his government was at fault, and the nasty factional and union deals that have played out and been managed pragmatically by him, at some cost. Neither the positive nor the negative elements here would come as a surprise to those who follow the news in Victoria, though the scale of the negatives is more apparent when read through this book length treatment. I first heard of this book through an Adelaide Writers Week panel which discussed biographies of politicians while they are in office and the problem of the impact this can have, especially if cherry-picked by oppositions, and it was noted that although this book came out before one recent election it did not apparently make much of a stir. This suggests to me that the overall picture portrayed in the book is already known to the electorate, who opted for a landslide win to Andrews on the basis of what he is achieving, and notwithstanding the known negatives – in this sense this book and its analysis and implications about accountability and democracy are of wider interest.
September 15, 2023
Overall, this is a good overview of Andrews' background and time in government. Given my interest in politics I have followed Andrews fairly closely since he became Premier, but hadn't known a great deal about his pre-politics life (or his time in parliament before 2014), so it was a useful read for me in that way.
Andrews' insights into what matters to the voting public and what doesn't, as well as his "push through" approach to scandals and failures, has meant he has much less to fear from the media than many of his predecessors or contemporaries. It's a game he knows how to play extraordinarily well. This has genuine implications for accountability, but it also means that the press can't use trivial "gotcha" moments to wield power over him in the way they're used to (it's much easier to catch a politician in a lie or a backflip than it is to understand genuine policy failures and explain them to the public). Rather than doing the hard work of adapting and evolving their journalism to pursue real accountability through deep knowledge, understanding and explanation of policy matters, most political journalists have elected to keep pursuing gotchas and theatre criticism, and then having a massive sook when it doesn't work.
Ilanbey is a journalist with The Age, and I'd say she is better than a lot of her contemporaries on this front (full disclosure: I have spoken with her a few times with my PTUA hat on, before she joined The Age, and those chats and the subsequent journalism was always positive and high quality). And she does briefly acknowledge some of the broader problems with the journalist class towards the end of the book. But nonetheless, she is very much writing the book from a journalists' perspective, and this undercurrent of "It's all Dan's fault, not the journalists' fault" is present throughout the book, and to my mind it gets in the way of the analysis to some extent.
Nonetheless well worth a read for anyone who's interested in Victorian/Australian politics.
Andrews' insights into what matters to the voting public and what doesn't, as well as his "push through" approach to scandals and failures, has meant he has much less to fear from the media than many of his predecessors or contemporaries. It's a game he knows how to play extraordinarily well. This has genuine implications for accountability, but it also means that the press can't use trivial "gotcha" moments to wield power over him in the way they're used to (it's much easier to catch a politician in a lie or a backflip than it is to understand genuine policy failures and explain them to the public). Rather than doing the hard work of adapting and evolving their journalism to pursue real accountability through deep knowledge, understanding and explanation of policy matters, most political journalists have elected to keep pursuing gotchas and theatre criticism, and then having a massive sook when it doesn't work.
Ilanbey is a journalist with The Age, and I'd say she is better than a lot of her contemporaries on this front (full disclosure: I have spoken with her a few times with my PTUA hat on, before she joined The Age, and those chats and the subsequent journalism was always positive and high quality). And she does briefly acknowledge some of the broader problems with the journalist class towards the end of the book. But nonetheless, she is very much writing the book from a journalists' perspective, and this undercurrent of "It's all Dan's fault, not the journalists' fault" is present throughout the book, and to my mind it gets in the way of the analysis to some extent.
Nonetheless well worth a read for anyone who's interested in Victorian/Australian politics.
November 15, 2022
As a general rule, Australians are not much interested in political biographies. From what I've seen, most of them end up before very long on the bargains table at the bookshop, and this might be because they are usually written (often too hastily) by journalists capitalising on current events rather than by professional biographers or historians taking the long view.
(Historian David Day for example, wrote memorable bios of Prime Ministers John Curtin (1999) and Ben Chifley (2001) (I read both pre-blog), and he also wrote bios of Prime Ministers Andrew Fisher (2008) and Paul Keating (2015, on the TBR) (And also of progressive lawyer Maurice Blackburn, Champion of the People (2019, see my review). See Day's website here)
To muster interest in a political biography, many of their authors resort to exaggerating the significance of some quotable titbit of scandal, useful in our compromised media landscape for fellow political journalists—depending on how shabby they are—to blow up out of all proportion. (I am thinking of grubby commentary about that bio of former PM Bob Hawke, for example.) Or they claim to be 'revealing' ... as does Sumeyya Ilanbey's unauthorised biography of Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews, published just in time to capitalise on the forthcoming state election.
Alas, while Daniel Andrews might be 'revealing' for people who've paid little attention to politics, (but then, they aren't likely to read it) I suspect that it's a yawn for fellow journalists looking for a scoop. There's really nothing much that isn't already known about its subject, and mostly Ilanbey resorts to a skewed version of the Labor government's history since its election in 2014, using anonymous sources to report more in the way of insinuations than any achievements of the Premier or his government.
To read the rest of my review please read https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/13/d...
(Historian David Day for example, wrote memorable bios of Prime Ministers John Curtin (1999) and Ben Chifley (2001) (I read both pre-blog), and he also wrote bios of Prime Ministers Andrew Fisher (2008) and Paul Keating (2015, on the TBR) (And also of progressive lawyer Maurice Blackburn, Champion of the People (2019, see my review). See Day's website here)
To muster interest in a political biography, many of their authors resort to exaggerating the significance of some quotable titbit of scandal, useful in our compromised media landscape for fellow political journalists—depending on how shabby they are—to blow up out of all proportion. (I am thinking of grubby commentary about that bio of former PM Bob Hawke, for example.) Or they claim to be 'revealing' ... as does Sumeyya Ilanbey's unauthorised biography of Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews, published just in time to capitalise on the forthcoming state election.
Alas, while Daniel Andrews might be 'revealing' for people who've paid little attention to politics, (but then, they aren't likely to read it) I suspect that it's a yawn for fellow journalists looking for a scoop. There's really nothing much that isn't already known about its subject, and mostly Ilanbey resorts to a skewed version of the Labor government's history since its election in 2014, using anonymous sources to report more in the way of insinuations than any achievements of the Premier or his government.
To read the rest of my review please read https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/13/d...
December 3, 2022
Political biographies of our time, a project for the brave. The book is probably not worth four stars, but the author's bravery must be worth an additional ½ point.
A moderately informed Victorian is never going to learn much by reading this book. The subject and the times have been covered extensively by the media and rehashed in enthusiastic conversations at work, the bus stop and over the back fence. Most of us have heard most of it before and naturally formed an opinion. Whether or not we are politically motivated is irrelevant because during the past three years, due to COVID 19, we have all been very involved. So, for this reason I must admire the author.
A well written, easy to read book that was certainly enjoyable but not difficult to put down because what was on the next page was usually obvious.
The author gave Andrews pats on the back and kicks in the head where appropriate, but when it came to the lock downs the author did appear to swing the boot with anger.
The author’s opinion was slipped into the lines too often and I expect at times unnoticed. Anonymous quotes were used freely despite amounting to little.
A moderately informed Victorian is never going to learn much by reading this book. The subject and the times have been covered extensively by the media and rehashed in enthusiastic conversations at work, the bus stop and over the back fence. Most of us have heard most of it before and naturally formed an opinion. Whether or not we are politically motivated is irrelevant because during the past three years, due to COVID 19, we have all been very involved. So, for this reason I must admire the author.
A well written, easy to read book that was certainly enjoyable but not difficult to put down because what was on the next page was usually obvious.
The author gave Andrews pats on the back and kicks in the head where appropriate, but when it came to the lock downs the author did appear to swing the boot with anger.
The author’s opinion was slipped into the lines too often and I expect at times unnoticed. Anonymous quotes were used freely despite amounting to little.
November 13, 2022
An award-winning journalist, Sumeyya Ilanbey has penned a most readable biography, on Daniel Andrews the Premier of Victoria. Subtitled The Revealing Biography of Australia's Most Powerful Premier, this is a well-balanced and interesting portrait of one of the most influential and effective politicians in Australia today. So typical of today’s world of social media, our politics is hence polemical and this study into the character of such a pivotal figure is most welcome. With its well-referenced footnotes and handy index, it is a most readable book with a nuance that is reduced to a dichotomy of personality styles. Love or loathe Daniel Andrews, this is a quality biography that is a four and a half star read rating that reveals not only the politician but importantly the man himself. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.
January 12, 2023
A very good read showing the good and not so good faces of Dan Andrews
August 4, 2023
Good Insight
Good to understand what makes him tick and what his legacy will be. Very thorough analysis of his time in politics and his rapid rise in the Labor ranks.
Good to understand what makes him tick and what his legacy will be. Very thorough analysis of his time in politics and his rapid rise in the Labor ranks.
January 2, 2026
4.25⭐️
I think people are attacking this book due to its subject character, but the actual content and information was well researched and presented.
I think people are attacking this book due to its subject character, but the actual content and information was well researched and presented.
November 2, 2022
As much a history of the Victoria Labor government under Andrews as it is of Andrews, the man. I suppose that's somewhat inevitable but I came away thinking that it's a better account of the former than the latter. Despite the detailed description of family life and Labor's behind-the-scenes machinations, I felt Ilanbey was less than successful at revealing anything much about Andrews, beyond that which is already established given a knowledge of the public record.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews