Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has been admitted to a Melbourne hospital with an unknown illness.
Mr Andrews, 53, is being treated at the Monash Clayton hospital and is in a stable condition. One source suggested Mr Andrews may have had a stroke, while another told the Herald Sun the ex-premier suffered a “minor medical issue” and was “fine”.
Mr Andrews was previously put in intensive care at the Alfred Hospital after fracturing his spine and breaking several ribs at a holiday rental at Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula in 2021.
He said he slipped on two small wooden steps, but his office’s initial refusal to provide details about the accident or the location generated conspiracy theories, all of which he has since dismissed.
Mr Andrews resigned as premier in 2023 after overseeing Victoria’s human rights-violating response to Covid, including the world’s longest lockdowns, which he imposed on Melbourne along with vaccine and mask mandates.
He was nicknamed “Dumpling Dan” and “Dimsum Dan” for signing a secret Belt and Road Initiative agreement with China in 2018 that was later torn up by the federal government and taking a shadowy $82,000 visit to Beijing in 2023. He was then a guest at military parade in the Chinese capital in September this year.
Mr Andrews and his wife Catherine are now being sued for defamation by then-teenage cyclist Ryan Meuleman, who they collided with in 2013, leaving him seriously injured, and have been given a pre-Christmas deadline to argue their defence.
The “bike boy” incident sparked allegations of a cover-up, but the Andrews have always denied wrongdoing.
Header image: Daniel Andrews recovers in hospital from a broken back in 2021 (X).
