There's been criticisms in the past of certain statues.
Of honouring slave traders, imperial conquerors, colonial
murderers, war mongers, genecidal exploiters, and so on.

There's been suggestions that they should be taken down.
or at least - have their statues re-inscribed with a
factual history written on them to give people a further
understanding of the time.

I don't have a problem with that being done.

If we only had statues of freedom fighters, human rights
champions, revolutionaries, people like Mandela, Gandhi, to
name just two - then we're not looking at our past through
the lens of history - if we ignore the others we don't
approve of.

Just a thought.

The discussion concerning Daniel Andrews statue can
be broadened to include our relationship with history
and whether we should build statues and monuments in
the first place.

Do statues and monuments - have a role to play in either
honouring people, or reappraising historic wrongs? Or do they
really encourage us to air-brush out difficult and
contentious parts of our history rather than engage with
and try to understand the historical context - which may
help us to understand the present?

Daniel Andrews will be the fifth Victorian Premier to
have a statue made and displayed.

Should he be denied this honour?

He's Victoria's longest serving Labot premier -
leading his party to 3 election wins.

He spent almost nine years as premier and more than
2 decades in politics.

You are always going to get the blinked extremist view on these thing. GY said this in his biased opinion; "Andrews is one of the worst people to fill the position of Victorian Premier". No mention made of Australia's longest and worst PM 'Pig Iron' Bob Menzies. These must be some "memorial" to that long gone admirer of Hitler somewhere in Aussie, even if its only in the Liberal's party room! Its all a load of nonsense in my opinion.

Dear Paul,

As I wrote earlier - Andrew's hardline approach to the
COVID pandemic made him a polarizing figure and
controversy was never far away from his government in his
9 years as Victoria's premier. There was a long list of
controversies that undermined his popularity.

The fact remains though that he does qualify for a statue
according to the policy that Kennett put in place - Andrews
being Labor's longest serving Victoria's premier.

In any case it will be up to Victoria's parliament.

Which I guess is also true in the case of
other countries and their governments regarding who they choose
to honour and the monuments they choose to build.
Germany made its choice. And yet look at the rise of some
of its political parties today.

Hi Foxy,

A good leader is not always going to be a "popular" leader, tough decisions have to be made at times. In a time of crisis the true leader shown exactly that, leadership. FDR is an example in America with his leadership during the Great Depression, as is Churchill with his leadership of Britain during the darkest days of WWII. A little away from politics Mahatma Gandhi, probably the greatest leader in modern times (my opinion) had a certain quality that although not popular with everyone, showed leadership that changed a nation, Gandhi gave inspiration to millions that changed the world in many ways.

In Australia I rated Menzies as our worse ever PM, when leadership was required in a crisis, the tough decisions needed to defend Australia from the Japanese, Menzies proved to be a weak, vacillating leader who had to be replaced.