Unmasked

By Geoff Shaw

Victoria, Australia's most populated state, has suffered unprecedented governance of seemingly relentless, drastic, and stringent laws which has put at risk viability and survival of the state and its people.

Under these laws, the leader of Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews has taken Victoria's capital Melbourne, from being the World's most liveable city to the World's most locked down city.

This book unmasks the man, his government, his policies, and what has transpired in the state of Victoria since he was in positions of power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669831396

Geoff Shaw

Dubbed "rogue, rorter, rebel and maverick," amongst other things, by political foes and the media, businessman, accountant, and former politician, Geoff Shaw grew up in Frankston, Victoria and served four years in the Victorian Parliament between 2010-2014. During the longest lockdowns on the planet, his wife said he should write a book—and he did—in between businesses, surf skiing, and drumming. Geoff lives in a beach side suburb of Melbourne with his family.

Book preview

1

DECISIVE DAN

We will not disappoint them!

- Dan Andrews’ election victory address to Victorians.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

- Thomas Jefferson. Third President of the

United States and Founding Father

Daniel Michael Andrews is the 48th Premier of Victoria, Australia.

He is aligned with the Socialist Left of the Labor Party that is pro-union, pro-abortion, high taxes, bigger government, and pro-other social regressive ideas.

On being elected to the safe Labor Legislative Assembly seat of Mulgrave in 2002, he was immediately handed Parliamentary Secretary for Health.

Dan was appointed to the Cabinet after the 2006 election, serving as minister for Gaming, Minister for Consumer Affairs, and Minister Assisting the Premier on Multicultural Affairs.

He was appointed Health Minister in the Labor government in 2007. As Health Minister, he voted for abortion in 2008.

In 2010 he became Leader of the Opposition after Labor lost to the Liberal Party.

Labor then won back the government four years later, defeating a lame Liberal government, and Dan became Premier of Victoria in November 2014. An incumbent administration was overthrown after only one term in office for the first time since 1955.

It is interesting to note that in the 2014 election Dan lost four per cent of local support in his seat of Mulgrave, but Labor increased overall in Victoria by 3.57 per cent.

Dan remarked in his victory address: "Victoria’s people have given the greatest of gifts, entrusted us with the greatest of obligations, and showered the greatest of honours upon us tonight. We will not disappoint them!"

When Dan became leader, he wasted no time and immediately started implementing his pet election promises.

Dan cancelled the East-West Link Road project as he had promised, costing Victorians more than $1 billion. Beginning projects include the Melbourne Metro Rail Project and the level crossing elimination project.

He made the day before the Australian Football League Grand Final a public holiday.

Dan offered a formal apology in Parliament on 24 May 2016, for gay males in Victoria who were imprisoned when homosexuality was criminal in the state. It was made legal 35 years before 1981.

In August 2018, he proposed plans to construct a $50 billion suburban rail loop connecting all major rail lines through Melbourne Airport.

When Labor won a resounding victory in the November 2018 election, winning an eight-seat swing for 55 seats out of 88 seats (a clear majority), Dan was re-elected as the premier of Victoria, tying Labor’s second-best seat total in Victoria. In Victoria’s over 126-year history, a Labor administration has only been reelected five times.

Dan became the third Victorian Labor leader to win a second term in office, including former premiers John Cain Jnr and Steve Bracks.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1996, Dan became an electoral officer for a Labor Federal member of parliament. From there, he went and worked in the Labor party’s headquarters from 1999 to 2002 and then was elected to the seat of Mulgrave in 2002 and has been a member of the Victorian Parliament ever since.

How fortunate is Victoria to have a leader who has no business experience, nor a working life outside politics? He has been in the public purse since graduating, except for 1999-2002 when he worked in Labor’s headquarters.

And it shows: ¹

Peter Murray, who taught him economics in high school, remembers Dan as not a brilliant student, but he would work and work on something until he understood it. Mathematics was always a problem for him when he started economics at Monash; it was the statistics that killed him.²

And it’s killing Victoria.

Besides decisively ripping up contracts worth over a billion dollars, proudly being the first Premier to lead a pride march in his first two months as leader, and starting some massive infrastructure projects, Dan has also unapologetically taken Victoria to Number 1 in Australia for debt and lost the state’s AAA credit rating.

Dan’s crowning acts of decisiveness came in March 2020, when he evoked the longest, and possibly harshest, lockdowns in the world.

It was one that was inflicted on the approximately 6.7 million people living under his rule…

• One that killed off many small businesses, hopes, and jobs.

• One that took two years out of children’s learning at school.

• One that shut down freedom of movement, getting married and seeing family.

• One that suppressed freedon of speech - any sign of dissent or protests was dealt harshly with by using police force.

• One that he said was to stop this new killer virus, Covid-19/Corona, in 14 days if we kept to ourselves, isolated, and listened to Dan’s directives - which were always using the most up-to-date expert medical advice.

• One that spread out over two years, six lockdowns for 263 days, making it a world record for the number of lockdowns and number of days in lockdown compared to anywhere on the planet.

• One most of us will probably forget as memories fade and new events take over our lives.

• One, though, this book hopes to capture over the following chapters.

2

DECENT DAN

Move on. Nothing to see here.

- Leslie Nielsen, Naked Gun

If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.

- By every mother in the world

3

DESCENT INTO MADNESS

FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real

- Heaps of people

"When authority is total, so too is the madness of the man who

declares it, and the potential for the abuse of power."

- Rick Wilson, American political strategist, and author

LOCKDOWN 1

31 March – 4 July 2020 (43 Days)

32 people in hospital. 6 in ICU.

In February 2020, Covid hysteria began and rapidly filled the world with all sorts of fear. All sorts of doom.

Well, not Covid as such.

In a contribution to The Australian newspaper, Professor of Law at the University of Queensland, and writer, James Allen described this hysteria.

Titled Covid hysteria based on lies, propaganda, and ignorance, he wrote;

The proportional hazards are something that many individuals are completely unaware of. When asked what they believe their chances of dying if they infect with Covid would be, the majority are off. A handful even estimates the probability incorrectly by two orders of magnitude (saying 30% when, at best, it’s approximately 0.3%). And we’re talking about a person’s risk of passing away before receiving vaccinations.

Government propaganda–because there is no other way to describe it–has deliberately tried to scare people senseless and hence to distort their relative-risk assessments. That has been an obvious goal, including of all the daily press conferences with the breathless recitation of cases by politicians without an ounce of concern for freedom-related issues, and by the public- health types.

Dan Andrews’ response was to fuel the scaremongering mantra with harsh, decisive, discriminatory, illogical action.

Dan proclaimed the State of Emergency for Victoria on March 16, 2020. According to the report, this granted the Chief Health Officer (CHO) the authority to take any action required to stop the virus’s spread and lower the danger to Victorians’ health. In effect it was powers to destroy lives and businesses.

These powers allowed for people to be detained, restrict movement and prevent entry into premises, or provide any other measure considered reasonable to protect public health.

As we read later, anything reasonable to protect public health included police brutality, shooting rubber bullets into crowds, pepper spraying, pushing around young girls, harassing older women, arresting pregnant women, quarantining entire suburbs, locking down residential buildings, tackling people to the ground for not wearing face masks, and threatening people to either be vaccinated or lose their jobs.

Throw on top of that, for free, was the over 200 daily morning updates, throughout 2020 and 2021, Dan fed to the ever-hungry wake of vultures of the media, eager to feast on whatever proceeded from Dan’s deadpan, discouraging diatribe. Who then gleefully relayed that to the masses, creating more fear. More anxiety. More division.

Fines for people not complying with a directive were up to $20,000. Body corporates could be up to $100,000!

Unbelievable fines Dan, but one way to pay the massive debt you created for Victorians.³

Dan’s first descent into madness move was to enforce 14-day, isolation on travelers on entering Australia and cancel gatherings of more than 500 people - closing galleries, libraries, and museums. The Melbourne Comedy Festival (not featuring Dan) and the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival also postponed.

Two days later, excited about these newly decreed powers he created, and keen to proceed with his I’m led by the medical advice, flatten the curve plan, Dan banned people from gathering for indoor activities such as places of worship, basketball, restaurants, in fact, any indoor place that would have over 100 people gathered at one time.

This based on 121 confirmed coronavirus cases? Yep. Generously, Dan kept the fines the same.

ANZAC Day events were cancelled.⁴

In signing off that day’s press release, Dan said: We will do what it takes to keep Victorians safe.

Yeah right Dan.

On 21 March 2020 spendthrift Dan decided he’d better help small businesses he has closed down by announcing a $1.7 billion economic survival and jobs package.

As former US President Ronald Reagan once notably said: Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: `If it moves, tax it. If it continues to move, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it’.

So Dan did, as did the Australian Liberal government.

But it did not have to be this way. Dan didn’t need to use a sledgehammer to crack an egg. Then again, maybe he couldn’t help himself. What dictator can relinquish power he just gave himself (sorry, the power he gave to the CHO)?

On 22 March 2020, Dan announced a shutdown of all non-essential activities.

During this time Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: Everyone who has a job in this economy is an essential worker. As Supreme Leader of Victoria, though, Dan, and not the Prime Minister, will tell Victorians who are essential–and not everyone is.

Victoria—the downward spiral State.

The next day, quicker than Flash Dan, had a coronavirus enforcement police squad of 500 established to check on returning travellers, making sure they were not escaping from their 14-day compulsory isolation, and enforcing bans on indoor and outdoor gatherings.

He threatens that the new police coronavirus enforcement squad will take action against anyone caught doing the wrong thing.

In Dan’s usual talk down to the peasants style, he signs off with:

In addition, I urge every Victorian to uphold their civic responsibility and practise social distance: wash your hands frequently and maintain excellent hygiene practices by keeping a distance of at least 1.5 meters from other people.

Do that for yourself, your loved ones, and for the loved ones of people you have never met. It will save lives.

Thanks, Doc!

But Dan is just warming up, desperate to spread the fear. Oh, I mean, ah, the expert medical safety message.

On 25 March 2020, Dan brought in Stage 2 restriction. But wait, there’s more …

I’ll be upfront with you. There will also be a Stage 3.

Go, Dan! Right out of the tyrant’s handbook. Full steam ahead with the unattainable goal of a Covid zero strategy.

I know this is stressful and I know this is scary. (Thanks, Daddy. I feel so much better now that you are with me in this)

The measures we already have in place are difficult, and these will be harder again. (It’s no WW2 and you’re no Winston Churchill)

I want to reassure you that things like supermarkets, petrol stations, banks, post offices, and bottle shops – and several other essential services – will stay open. (Like the business I work at? Nope)

But I want to be very clear: the more people ignore the rules and ignore the advice – the more this virus will continue to spread. (Here it comes …)

There is no social occasion or celebration that’s worth more than a human life. (Hmmm … concerned for human life?)⁵

For Victorians, that means if you can stay home, you must stay home.

So, bottle shops are an essential service, hey Dan?

I guess what else do you expect people to do since you have shut down many of the businesses, fed them with fear and propaganda, locked them in their houses - not being allowed to visit anyone or have anyone over – and with churches and sporting clubs closed?

How about we go to the liquor store, buy a slab of beer or some whisky, and sit and watch Netflix? Better still, pour a glass whilst watching more than 200 of Dan’s deadpan morning presentations of his further plans for Victoria? What a great idea! Fed on a diet of Dan’s morning delicacies of doom, death, and scotch!

And some wonder why depression and mental health issues have risen under Dan.

Moving right along - and we are not yet in mandated Lockdown #1 - Dan releases on-the-spot fines to keep Victorians safe on 28 March 2020.

Dan grants police the authority to impose penalties of up to $1,652 on individual citizens and up to $9,913 on corporations for failing to abide by the rules.

Seriously, how does someone come up with these numbers? Probably some deemed ‘essential’ public servants, paid too much and with too much time on their hands.

If any Victorian was to organise or attend a wedding that had present more than the two persons being married, the celebrant and two witnesses, or a funeral that had more than 10 persons, you were breaking Dan’s law and subject to fines.

If you organised a house auction, you were also defying Dan’s orders.

Hospitals also were directed to wind back all non-urgent surgery to make way for the supposed influx of Covid patients. People I know had their already booked hip replacement put back another year because of these orders.

Non-urgent public dental services were also made unavailable.

The above was just an introduction to what Despot Dan had in store. Before it was just a heavy suggestion to stay home. Now we move to compulsory home incarceration for all non-essential Victorians.

On 30 March 2020, the first of six lockdowns were announced at roughly 10 am.

At 11:59 that night, the stay-at-home directives went into force. Plenty of time for small businesses to organise their staff, supplies, produce, deliveries, and day-to-day running of their lives!

The benefits of having the Supreme Leader with no business background. Dan does not understand, has no IQ, no empathy for running businesses. He has been in the public purse most of his life.

The declaration imposed stringent new limitations on social events and mandated that, when it is possible to stay at home, citizens must do so.

Here is Dan’s heartened sermon to people about to embark on the first lockdown:

"My message to every Victorian is that there are only four reasons to leave your home: food and supplies, medical care, exercise, and work or education.

"We are also restricting gatherings to no more than two people except for members of your immediate household and for work or education.

"We will not be breaking up household family dinners (did Dan really say that? Yep!) but BBQs with the neighbours cannot happen anymore.

"Playgrounds, skate parks and outdoor gyms will also close.

"If people breach these directions, they face on-the-spot fines of $1,652 for individuals and $9,913 for businesses. Larger fines can also be issued through the courts.

"As we deal with this health crisis, we know that for many Victorians it’s an economic crisis as well. With many businesses losing their customers, and Victorians losing their jobs, paying rent is becoming impossible for some people.

"The events we are living through are unprecedented and are going to mean big changes for everyone, from our littlest Victorians to our most senior citizens.

"Life is going to look very different for a while but if we don’t make these changes now, the virus will continue to spread, and our health system will be overwhelmed.

"To flatten the curve, we are all going to have to sacrifice a lot. But it may be the most important thing we ever do (No, getting out of our lives would be Dan).

So please: Stay home. Protect our health system. Save lives.

A day later, on Dan Day, popularly known as April Fool’s Day, Doctor Dan announced to build 4,000 Intensive care unit beds worth $1.3 billion (which are still not here and certainly not needed).

A week later, our kids were banned from school by Dan. Enormous pressure was placed on parents over the two years of these lockdowns to effectively become teachers themselves, whilst their children were forced to be schooled at home.

Children’s emotional, mental, learning and physical wellbeing were impacted, with child psychologists booked months in advance for the many kids struggling, falling behind, and simply not coping.

Providing education is exceptionally hard via remote means. Many children who were used to running around outside were reduced to sitting in front of a computer at home with their teacher on the other end for hours at a time. Great for the future health of Victorians, Dan.

Less than two weeks into Lockdown #1, on 12 April 2020, in a press release titled Surge Funding Helping Our Mental Health System During Crisis, Dan opens the wallet again and announces a $59.4m package for mental health to help meet the demand as Victorians reach out for help with stress, isolation, and uncertainty.

It includes expanding online counselling to help, and suicide groups, such as BeyondBlue, Lifeline, Kids Helpline, and Suicide Victoria, because of the escalating demand under the fear Dan is proliferating.

Adding to the Covid hysteria, Dan quickly recruited 120 paramedics as front-line coronavirus workers - once again, an overreaction to the already worst-case scenario modelling.

But daily announcements telling us how bad this virus is, handing out huge amounts of money, and increasing health spending made Dan a leader of action, keeping us safe and comforting us with the we’re all in this together propaganda message advertised everywhere.

12 April 2020, Dan extended the lockdown of