The Urban Myth That "Sack Dan Andrews" Was A Labor Front

Does this look like a Labor front to you?

Group ticket voting in Victoria has again been in the news a lot lately - see my latest article about whether abolishing it would assist One Nation.  With this latest discussion has come a resurgence of a longrunning online urban myth concerning the shortlived Sack Dan Andrews party (or more formally Restore Democracy: Sack Dan Andrews Party) in the 2022 Victorian election.  The myth is that this party was set up to harvest the votes of people who hated former Victorian Premier Andrews and channel these votes back to Labor.  The reality is that while there is a disputed claim that Sack Dan Andrews (SDA) was a siphoning attempt of some sort, Labor gained no benefit from it anyway, and it had nothing to do with the party.  This article explores the reality of this short-lived party's preferences and its actual impact on the election in detail.  For those on twitter I also have a shorter version of events on a thread here.

The myth that Sack Dan Andrews was a Labor front has resurged on twitter mainly because of far-right attention-seeker Avi Yemini.  Yemini has been promoting attempts to create deceptively named parties called Save The Environment Party, Free Palestine Party and Muslim Votes Matter (not to be confused with the actual MVM movement active at the last federal election), whose Group Ticket preferences would then favour One Nation or other right-wing parties.  The first of these at least is the work of fellow traveller Monica Smit.  Yemini - who has blocked me on twitter which prevents me from replying to many of his myths being posted there - has claimed that what is being done here is simply "flipping the script" from when Sack Dan Andrews siphoned preferences to Labor.  Except that actually never happened.

I have a mixed view of these tactics.  There is obviously a heavy dose of trolling the left alongside sincere opposition to group ticket voting, and if these parties actually formed and ran then they would clearly be dishonest.  But far more contempt belongs to the system that enables and rewards such tactics.   Scrapping group ticket voting would mean that any votes for deceptively named parties would simply scatter to whoever the voters chose to preference next, rendering the siphoning attempt ineffective.  If these attempts actually help to highlight the urgent need to get rid of group ticket voting before this year's election then they will have served a useful purpose.  Perhaps there is an intent by the far right to use these tactics to claim credit for scrapping group ticket voting and this might make some in Labor reluctant to give them the satisfaction.  However if that is a concern, I won't let them get away with it.  You'll see ...

Origins of SDA

There are multiple accounts of what Sack Dan Andrews actually was.  The party was founded and led by Tosh-Jake Finnigan, previously known as a whistleblower in the "red shirts rorts" scandal which despite the unsubtle attempts of the Herald-Sun had no impact at all on the 2018 "Danslide" election result.  It had a website that attacked Daniel Andrews and ... not much else. The claim that SDA was actually a fake anti-Andrews party designed to steal votes by deception originated with Glenn Druery in the Angry Victorians sting video:

"So let me tell you about Sack Dan Andrews [...] it's one of mine [..] I looked all over Aidan's social media [..] every other post was "Sack Dan Andrews, Sack Dan Andrews, Sack Dan Andrews" - aha!  We're going to form a Sack Dan Andrews Party.  We did, me and my allies.  That's been formed because if that gets a decent draw it's going to completely usurp Clive, One Nation and poor little Aidan".  

Druery went on to discuss how SDA was a fake "cooker party" that Aidan McLindon (of the so-called Freedom Party) still thought was a real "cooker party" and how the aim was to win a seat.  At no point in the video did he say SDA was working with Labor or funelling preferences for anyone else, the impression was simply that the idea was to nab primary votes with a catchy and deceptive name and deprive the non-Druery right wing parties of those votes.  

The Sack Dan Andrews party responded to the sting with a Statement Regarding Glenn Druery which opened with the particularly solid line "Unsurprisingly Glenn Druery talks copious amounts of shit" and claimed Druery had no involvement beyond Finnigan telling Druery that the party was running.  Finnigan explicitly denied that SDA was a Labor feeder, outlined SDA's preferencing strategy and said that if SDA preferences elected any Labor candidate they would "coward punch myself on a joint Discernable/ 6 News Australia live stream."  Finnigan reiterated that SDA was an attack on Labor but also praised Druery for his success in getting minor parties elected.

There is an obvious logical problem with the idea of SDA being a Labor Party front.  Why on earth would Finnigan, who was a disgruntled whistleblower against Labor in a prominent scandal, participate in such a thing?  

The actual SDA preference tickets

It's a sad sign of the laziness of social media ghettos that many posters have repeated the line that SDA sent preferences to Labor without bothering to find out whether the group ticket preference assignments might be, for instance, actually available online to see who this party actually gave preferences to.  And indeed they are online, and prominently, via the ABC.  In general SDA put Labor close to last.  

Where they didn't, one of the confusing aspects of group ticket voting is that parties may appear to have given a high preference to another party when what they have actually done is given a high ranking to some candidates for that party - but those candidates will actually be elected or eliminated before the preference can reach them.  This is often used by parties to muddy the waters about who they are preferencing, though I'm not aware of evidence that that was SDA's intention in this case.  

In Eastern Victoria, the party preferenced Labor dead last.  

In Northern Metropolitan and Southern Metropolitan, the party preferenced Labor last except for the Greens.

In North-East Metropolitan, the party preferenced Labor last except for preferencing Sonia Terpstra above all Greens and all Liberals except Matthew Bach, and also Shaun Leane above one Liberal, Nick McGowan.  

In Northern Victoria, the party submitted two tickets, both of which had Labor above the Greens, and one of which also had Labor above United Australia, Reason, Victorian Socialists and Coalition but below fifteen other parties.

In South-East Metro, the party submitted two tickets, both of which had Labor above the Greens and Victorian Socialists and one of which also had them above the Liberals.

In Western Metropolitan, the party preferenced Labor last except for an independent and the Greens and Liberals.

In Western Victoria, the party put the third Labor candidate Megan Bridger-Darling seventh, behind its own candidates, Hinch Justice and one Shooters Fishers and Farmers candidate.  The rest of Labor appeared way down the ticket, alternating with Coalition candidates and above the other Shooter (weird), Animal Justice, Victorian Socialists and Greens.  

As for which parties the SDA tickets preferenced highly this varied quite a bit.  Generally they preferenced minor parties with sometimes the odd major party candidate thrown in.  Most of the parties they preferenced highly were Druery alliance parties, but not all, with the Angry Victorians party and Freedom Party appearing high on some of their lists.  Mostly the Druery alliance parties they preferenced were on the right but not all, eg they had Animal Justice (thought to be an alliance party but had actually ratted on Druery) as their top preference after themselves in one region.   

What votes did they get and where did they go?

The Sack Dan Andrews party did not poll much, managing just 0.83% statewide.

This is what happened with their above the line votes in each count.  I also comment on whether the SDA preferences could have caused a different winner (at least via an obvious route) had they been different.  

* Eastern Victoria: Their ticket preferences split between the Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Health Australia.  On the exclusion of Health Australia their ticket preferences reunited with Shooters Fishers and Farmers, who went on to be elected easily.  SDA preferences had no impact on the result as Shooters would have won anyway.

* North-Eastern Metro: The party's preferences would have flowed to Rod Barton of the Transport Matters Party but Barton's preference spiral had already failed.  They therefore flowed to Health Australia.  On Health Australia's exclusion they flowed to the Liberal Democrats, and then to Labour DLP's Hugh Dolan who went on to narrowly lose to the Greens.  Again no impact on the result.

* Northern Metro: The party's preferences flowed to Labour DLP's Adem Somyurek who went on to win the final seat.  Again no impact on the result.

* Northern Victoria: The party's preferences split between Animal Justice and Liberal Democrats.  On the exclusion of Liberal Democrats the remainder pooled with Animal Justice who were elected, then flowed to One Nation who were also elected on Animal Justice's surplus.  Again no impact on the result.

* South-East Metro: The party's preferences split between Derryn Hinch and the Liberal Democrats' David Limbrick.  On the exclusion of Hinch the remainder pooled with Limbrick.  Limbrick narrowly defeated the Liberals for the final seat.  Had SDA preferenced the Liberals above Limbrick, the Liberals would have won, so the SDA's preferencing decision caused Limbrick to retain his seat.

* Southern Metro: The party's preferences flowed to Sustainable Australia's Clifford Hayes who lost to Labor by a large margin.  No impact on the result.

* West Metro: The party's preferences flowed to Bernie Finn (Labour DLP) who ended up losing to the Liberals by a very narrow margin.  No impact on the result but they very nearly caused Finn to win.

* Western Victoria: The party's preferences flowed to DHJP incumbent Stuart Grimley who ended up losing the final seat to the Liberals.  However there was in the meantime a close contest between the Greens and Legalise Cannabis.  Had SDA preferenced Legalise Cannabis ahead of Grimley, Legalise Cannabis would have defeated the Greens, who SDA put last (all this being another example of how stupid group ticket voting outcomes and decisions are).  Although this was the region where they had put Labor's third candidate Megan Bridger-Darling at a rather high 7 on their preference list, the preference was never reaching her because Grimley was higher at 4 and was always going to climb high in the count based on seven Druery parties preferencing the DHJP ticket next after themselves.  

No Sack Dan Andrews ticket preferences reached Labor at any live stage in any count.

Myth variant

A very common variant of the myth says that Sack Dan Andrews preferences re-elected or helped re-elect the Labor government.  In fact they could not have done so since government is determined in the lower house and Sack Dan Andrews only contested the upper house.  Furthermore it is only possible to direct voter preferences through group ticket voting in the upper house so Sack Dan Andrews could not have sent preferences anywhere in the lower house - it could only have recommended preferences via a how to vote card, and if those preferences favoured Labor then the few voters even seeing such a how to vote card would have immediately smelled a rat.  And finally, Labor actually led on primaries statewide and in every single seat it won except Hastings - the idea that Labor owed its lopsided 2022 win to doing well on preferences from anyone is simply wrong.  

Overall, the myth is attractive to people who hate Andrews because it sounds to them like the sort of thing that Victorian Labor might do.  While Victorian Labor have to a degree brought this perception on themselves by failing to get rid of Group Ticket Voting in twelve years in office (sigh), the reality is far more prosaic.  If Sack Dan Andrews was even a front at all, it was clearly not a front for Labor, Labor did not benefit from its preferences, and there is no evidence or reason to believe that Labor had anything at all to do with it.