Liberals demand Dan Andrews answer questions about his fall

[matte]

I think the people have a right to know, especially if the rumours are true.

The way the Labor party is so defensive about the fall actually speaks volumes. Are the Lindsay Fox rumours correct?

---

Victorian liberal demands Premier Daniel Andrews answer questions about his injuries

By Carly Waters
6 JUNE 2021

9 NEWS

A Liberal party member has demanded Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews provide more information about his injury, in a move some Labor MPs have branded "gutter politics".

Mr Andrews suffered broken ribs and spinal damage after falling on wet stairs while staying at a holiday home on the Mornington Peninsula on March 9.

He has not worked since the fall.

Today, the state's shadow treasurer Louise Staley issued a statement demanding the premier answer questions about the fall and his continued salary while on sick leave.

"Daniel Andrews has been off on sick leave for 91 days. He has continued to be paid as Premier despite not doing the job," the statement read.

"Over his time off he has pocketed over $110,000 ($1209.42 per day) of the taxes paid by the long-suffering people of Victoria."

FULL STORY: www.9news.com.au/national/liberal-party-demands-victorian-premier-daniel-andrews-answer-questions-about-his-fall-and-injuries/f275cf2a-3ae2-4146-a4a4-a26dfeb8a355

[caskur]

Jun 7, 2021 18:39:23 GMT 10 matte said:

Today, the state's shadow treasurer Louise Staley issued a statement demanding the premier answer questions about the fall and his continued salary while on sick leave.

"Daniel Andrews has been off on sick leave for 91 days. He has continued to be paid as Premier despite not doing the job," the statement read.

"Over his time off he has pocketed over $110,000 ($1209.42 per day) of the taxes paid by the long-suffering people of Victoria."

And this is exactly why politions are thorougly loathed.

All those Victorian working people unpaid in lockdown who have to jump through hoops and beg for a pittance from the thieving government just to survive, is seriously unjust.

[pim]

Under other circumstances I’d think that it must be a slow news day in Melbourne. But with everything else that’s going on there, that can’t really be right. So is this all that the Liberals have got? Desperate days for these nonentities.

[matte]

He should be upfront about the facts.

Was he or wasn't he having a piss up with Lindsay Fox during Melbourne's previous lockdown?

[pim]

Broken ribs and spinal issues

Pain in a Spinal Cord Injury

Topic Overview

Pain in a spinal cord injury (SCI) can be complicated and confusing. There are different types of pain, and they are often described in different ways. You may feel pain where you have feeling. But you may also feel pain in an area where otherwise you have no feeling. The pain may be severe at some times. But at other times it may disappear or bother you only a little.

The most common type of pain experienced with SCI is neuropathic pain around the injury area. This is also known as the "circle of fire" or the "ring of fire." Neuropathic pain is caused by damage to the nervous system. Other types of pain include musculoskeletal (pain in the bones, muscles, and joints), and visceral (pain in the abdomen).

www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/ug2929

Give the guy a break. OK?

[caskur]

Jun 7, 2021 19:54:14 GMT 10 matte said:

He should be upfront about the facts.

Was he or wasn't he having a piss up with Lindsay Fox during Melbourne's previous lockdown?

He was having a piss up. Was that wrong?

I am still not healed from my broken bone and Andrews has 5 broken bones, or more... He'll be out of action for another 2 months, minimum.

[ponto]

Trust the conservatives to take things to the gutter.

[matte]

Jun 7, 2021 20:22:26 GMT 10 caskur said:

Jun 7, 2021 19:54:14 GMT 10 matte said:

He should be upfront about the facts.

Was he or wasn't he having a piss up with Lindsay Fox during Melbourne's previous lockdown?

He was having a piss up. Was that wrong?

I am still not healed from my broken bone and Andrews has 5 broken bones, or more... He'll be out of action for another 2 months, minimum.

I am all for people having freedom and for these lockdowns to stop.

But other people at the time were not allowed to visit others, businesses were forced to throw out all the food they ordered in for Valentines day. No one is above the law. 

No one is wanting to see his private medical records or what his medical condition is. What they do want to know are the circumstances which led to the injury. Because at the time, people were meant to be in lockdown. 

[caskur]

Jun 7, 2021 20:37:57 GMT 10 matte said:

Jun 7, 2021 20:22:26 GMT 10 caskur said:

He was having a piss up. Was that wrong?

I am still not healed from my broken bone and Andrews has 5 broken bones, or more... He'll be out of action for another 2 months, minimum.

I am all for people having freedom and for these lockdowns to stop.

But other people at the time were not allowed to visit others, businesses were forced to throw out all the food they ordered in for Valentines day. No one is above the law. 

Couldn't they have 1 visitor during lock down? We could.

He shoudn't be paid for not working. But, I don't believe he isn't working. I think he is still working, he is still capable of using a computer and a phone.

[Gort]

Dan Andrews was staying at a rented holiday home and slipped on wet stairs in the morning as he prepared to leave for work.

Nothing to do with a "piss up" involving Lindsay Fox or otherwise.

Broken ribs are very nasty, I had a cracked rib once from riding the "Cha-Cha" with my son who crushed into my ribs. Ouch.

Painful just to breathe.


This is the Cha-Cha in action ... starts off nice and slow ... but when it gets to top speed ... things can happen.

[ponto]

I'd say things can happen...its turned you into an ol' granny.....

[Stellar]

Jun 7, 2021 21:14:50 GMT 10 Gort said:

Dan Andrews was staying at a rented holiday home and slipped on wet stairs in the morning as he prepared to leave for work.

Nothing to do with a "piss up" involving Lindsay Fox or otherwise.

Broken ribs are very nasty, I had a cracked rib once from riding the "Cha-Cha" with my son who crushed into my ribs. Ouch.

Painful just to breathe.


This is the Cha-Cha in action ... starts off nice and slow ... but when it gets to top speed ... things can happen.

Apart from all that .... is it good form for the Labor Premier to be such good friends with the billionaire Fox family?  And if so, what's in it for all of them?  

As for fractured ribs - been there, done that.  Mine were caused when I went up to feed my brother's horses when he was overseas.  Echo, the 17 hands thoroughbred is a brute of a horse.  When I opened the gate he shot through slamming me into the fence post.  That resulted in 3 fractured ribs and I took 2 weeks off work.  Whereas my younger son who fractured a couple of ribs snowboarding in Thredbo, didn't take any time off work!

Andrews is a slacker taking that money.  Should have just resigned.  Wouldn't be missed.  Clumsy, useless clod.  

[ponto]

He also has spinal injury and no doubt he is still on the job at home....no big deal.

[pim]

Christian Porter went on taking the taxpayer dime at A-G rate while he was off on his stress leave which annualises at a cool $357,247.50. Currently he’s minister for something-or-other and presumably draws the ministerial salary. Mind you from where I sit he doesn’t appear to be be doing much to earn his ministerial salary (plus allowances - let’s not forget the allowances!). Every time I see him on the TV news or read about him he’s mouthing off about what a “success” his failed court case has been.

Sauce for the goose ...

[matte]

Jun 8, 2021 10:13:49 GMT 10 ponto said:

He also has spinal injury and no doubt he is still on the job at home....no big deal.

On the job at home?

[ponto]

He has a phone, internet zoom or skype to keep in contact with the office...not as though he is O/S in Hawaii having a holiday in a emergency.

[pim]

Matt if you're accusing Daniel Andrews of slacking off while he's dealing with spinal injuries and broken ribs then really mate you've got far too much time on your hands. I'm not qualified medically and neither are you so neither of us is in a position to hold an informed debate regarding his medical condition or prognosis. I can tell you that I got injured at work a couple of decades ago which involved compound leg fractures, hospitalisation, several operations and loads of physio afterwards. I was off work for nine months as a result. Because the injury happened at work it all came under workers compensation and I was paid my salary in full during my recovery until I was judged (by doctors!) fit to return to work. On the face of it, Daniel Andrews will be off work for as long as it takes and he will not be disadvantaged in terms of the remuneration he would normally expect to receive as Premier. And the tabloid Labor-hating bean counters can eat their hearts out.

Of course there is the other possibility which is that the Victorian Liberals have decided that because their own electoral position is so dire and they see what's happened to their Liberal colleagues in WA, they may as well press the nuclear button and allege something utterly defamatory regarding Daniel Andrews. Problem with that scenario is that it's a recipe for electoral suicide and massive, massive damages payouts to Daniel Andrews who would be quite entitled to take them to the cleaners in a defamation action.

What do you do when you're a Labor state government and your Liberal opponents have decided to resort to the nuclear option and placed themselves at Ground Zero?

A defamation lawyer gives his take ...

Victorian Libs’ defamatory claims against Dan Andrews may be electoral suicide

If the premier chooses to sue, the opposition would have one possible defence: truth. It would have to prove he had committed some possibly criminal act.

Michael Bradley 8 June 2021 Crikey



The Victorian Liberal Party lifted its gaze and saw nothing but doom — and so it started doing crazy things. Things Victorian Premier Dan Andrews may be able to sue over.

It’s understandable that it would be very, very frustrating to be in opposition to the Andrews-led Labor government: the state is in its fourth major lockdown, it has suffered way harder in COVID-19 cases, deaths and economic carnage than the rest of the country combined, and some of that is demonstrably the state government’s fault.

Plus Andrews has the charisma of a holidaying librarian.

But the premier just keeps getting more popular. And that has driven the opposition mad — possibly suicidal.

The Liberals have spent the whole of COVID-19 complaining about everything Andrews does, happily contradicting themselves day to day as they follow the guiding principle that opposition means nothing more than to oppose.

That hasn’t worked at all. The Liberals’ leader has achieved name recognition equivalent to the recently former Labor leader in NSW, and a presence in the public mind akin to that of a Mr Whippy van that always seems to be a few streets away — unseen but annoyingly heard.

Nothing’s working — and presumably the idea of being constructive never made it on to the whiteboard. So they’ve gone nuclear.

Yesterday the opposition put out a press release noting that Andrews has been on sick leave for 91 days since he suffered a serious injury after a fall and asking a series of questions, including:

1. What is the address of the house where the accident occurred, and who owns it?

2. Who called the ambulance and what time did it arrive?

3. Were the police contacted and did they attend?

4. Has Daniel Andrews been interviewed either informally or formally by the police in relation to anything that occurred over that long weekend?

What the public was told at the time, and remains the official account, is that Andrews took a tumble at a holiday home and suffered a very bad injury requiring a long convalescence. He has been unable to return to work but is expected back some time this month.

Rumours have been flying for a while, off the mainstream in the turgid sewers of social media. Something about the accident having occurred at someone else’s house, some embarrassing/scandalous thing that is being kept hidden. Or that Andrews is in a far more grave condition or even dead, like Paul McCartney in 1966.

I can happily say I have no idea what the truth is here, and I definitely don’t care beyond hoping that Andrews is OK and will recover fully.

The Liberals apparently really do care — that is, they care that the public should be roiling with suspicion. There is no other possible explanation for the press release, launched into a public square that knows nothing more than that the premier is unwell.

The release says nothing, but conveys much. The questions are carefully crafted, not to allege, but to imply. They achieve that in spades. Whose house? Police? The hints couldn’t be broader if they were delivered by a dump truck.

What might the law say about this if Andrews is sufficiently offended to call it in? I think it would say that he has a very good case.

Defamation is not about what is said, but what the audience hears. That is contextual; it includes the words in their literal meanings, but also how they are commonly understood. And it includes the other words, the ones hiding between the lines.

Why, an ordinary reader would ask, is the opposition asking these questions about Andrews’ injury? What does it know that I don’t? It must know something.

The mind goes — because it has been directed — towards something sinister. Perhaps criminal. Definitely concealed. Absolutely something that the public is entitled to know.

The release is, I think, defamatory. If Andrews chose to sue, there would be one defence possible: truth. The publishers of the release would have to be able to prove that the defamatory imputations they have conveyed — essentially that Andrews’ injury arose in the context of some form of possibly criminal act, that the police were involved, and that the truth has been concealed from the public — are substantially true.

Otherwise Andrews would be entitled to potentially massive damages. The reputational harm Is more than obvious.

This leaves two tantalising possibilities. One is that the Liberals do know something, and there is a massive scandal regarding what really happened to Andrews which could consume his government entirely. The other is that the Liberals have no idea, and have just committed electoral suicide, a defamation so grievous that it might even qualify as criminal, and the grubbiest political act in living memory.

Guess we’ll know which it is soon enough.

Michael Bradley is a freelance writer and managing partner at Sydney firm Marque Lawyers, which was created in 2008 with the singular ambition of completely changing the way law is practised.

[ponto]

Andrews would not be idle and he wil be coming back soon....petty conservatives nit picking because they have nothing better to think about.

[pim]

These so-called "petty conservatives" must have a death wish with their defamatory sledging of Daniel Andrews regarding his current medical plight and their innuendos about "whose house?" "police?". In addition to electoral Armageddon there's the issue of damages if Andrews decides to sue. The party of Menzies in the state which nurtured Menzies and which Menzies himself described as "the jewel in the Liberal crown" being declared bankrupt because of damages awarded against it in a libel suit brought by a Labor premier? I'd like to see that!

[matte]

All the Victorian Liberal MPs are wanting to know is where he was on the date he had the "fall".



I am unsure how that is defamatory.

It is no different to the left winged media being all over Donald Trump's medical records.

[pim]

Ho hum, feel free to double down. Argue "defamatory" with Michael Bradley and Marque Lawyers. It's not my problem. I will watch, though, if the Victorian Liberals insist on going nuclear and place themselves at Ground Zero. Should be quite a sight. Bye!

[matte]

In the wake of Ms Staley's questions, Ambulance Victoria issued a statement today on the accident, shared with the permission of the patient, Mr Andrews.

"Ambulance Victoria received a triple zero call for an ambulance at 6.36am on Tuesday 9 March 2021 for a patient who had fallen on steps at a house in Sorrento," the statement read.

"Based on information provided during the call, the case did not require an immediate lights and sirens (life-threatening emergency response) and the call underwent secondary triage.

"This triage determined that the case was appropriate for ambulance response, and an ambulance was dispatched from the nearest ambulance branch in Sorrento under normal road conditions at 6.47am. The ambulance arrived at 7.01am.

"The patient was assessed by treating paramedics as having suspected fractured ribs, and pain relief was provided.

"The patient requested to attend a local hospital in order for the attending crew to remain within the area once cleared from a case.

"Peninsula Private Hospital Emergency Department was determined in consultation with the patient and treating paramedics. The hospital was appropriate for further investigation and treatment of the patient based on presenting symptoms and condition."

www.9news.com.au/national/daniel-andrews-injury-staircase-fall-conspiracy-theories-victorian-premier-louise-staley-national-news/ff243751-8629-4104-9451-7a4ceb33c053

[Stellar]

Former deputy leader of the Victorian Greens, Nina Springle, also hit out the shadow treasurer, writing: “You’ve got to be kidding me. Liberal Victoria have nothing else to offer than this rubbish? The man broke his back, he didn't stub a toe. If you break your back, Louise Staley, should we dock your pay while you recover?”

Dan Andrews didn't have this accident during working hours so he's not entitled to workers compensation.  Maybe he should be treated the same as any other employee and go on sick leave which is paid at a pittance.  Wouldn't that be appropriate for a Labor politician?  

ALL politicians are paid too generously and ALL of them connive to keep it that way.  

[matte]

Peta Credlin is now onto it.

She is one of the most common sense journalists in Australia:

[pim]

Liberals’ questions regarding Dan Andrews are a perfect case study in how to manufacture fake news

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

theconversation.com/liberals-dan-andrews-questions-are-a-perfect-case-study-in-how-to-manufacture-fake-news-162511



A case study in the manufacture of fake news is playing out right now in Melbourne.

Victoria’s shadow treasurer, Louise Staley, is putting about suggestive questions hinting darkly at a cover-up of how Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews injured his back three months ago. She has not produced a shred of evidence to support this suggestion, yet the exercise has gained substantial traction in the media. All the main news outlets have had to pay attention to it.

It is the kind of political chicanery that confronts responsible media with a dilemma: how to hold a public official to account without oxygenating the conspiracy theory in which she is trading.

In this case, the fake-news manufacturing process has worked like this.

A public official puts on the public record some questions that look innocuous but will be associated in some minds with a scurrilous conspiracy theory circulating on social media. Because it is a public official putting this on the public record, it is then picked up by a journalist. The journalist in turn asks a question about it at a press conference. In this case, the question was put to Acting Premier James Merlino on June 8. It necessarily generates a response from Merlino and that adds a further ingredient of apparent legitimacy to the mix. Ambulance Victoria feels it necessary to issue a statement reiterating the exact circumstances in which an ambulance was called to take Andrews to hospital. Then the Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, feels obliged to put out a statement confirming police did not attend the scene. All this adds to the false impression there is some real news here. But it doesn’t make the originating material true. The originating material remains fake, but now the conspiracy theory has accumulated many of the attributes of a real story.

However, responsible media recognise what the real story is. The real story is the attempt by a senior state Liberal MP to manufacture fake news – so they tell this story without oxygenating the content of the fake news itself.


Shadow Treasurer Louise Staley, manufacturer extraordinaire of fake news

Australia’s professional mass media – television, radio, newspapers – have followed this course. They have reported Staley’s raising of the conspiracy theory and her formulation of a series of questions to the government, while at the same time quoting condemnation of her antics by Merlino and others in the state government.

Even Sky News, notorious for its anti-Labor politics, has been circumspect. It has contented itself with references to a “torrent” of “amazing rumours” before retreating to safer and more familiar ground by describing Andrews as a Soviet-style paramount leader.

It reflects well on the Australian media – perhaps reinforced in their caution by the oppressiveness of Australia’s defamation laws – that they have handled this nasty outbreak of fakery with decency, accuracy and fairness.

The result is that, in this case, the manufacturing process has been cut off at the point of distribution.

For the record, Andrews slipped on wet stairs at a holiday house in Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula on March 9, sustaining several broken ribs and a fractured vertebra. He is expected to return to work some time this month.