Similarly, when Fairfax Media asked questions of Andrews, in the wake of the "lobster with an alleged mobster" scandal, if he'd ever dined with Tony Madafferi, he simply stonewalled. Labor has made the so-called "Lobstergate" scandal a key attack point against Matthew Guy for months: it has used the Opposition Leader's dinner with alleged mafia figure Tony Madafferi to undercut the Liberals' tough-on-crime agenda. However, ALP sources have told The Age that Andrews and Madafferi were seated on the same table at a Progressive Business fundraising dinner at the Grand Hyatt shortly after Labor won the 2002 Victorian election. Since Mr Andrews had, in the wake of Lobstergate, all but denied any links to Mr Madafferi, it seemed valid to ask: were the claims true? When was the last time the pair met? Has the Madafferi family donated to the ALP in the past? Did Mr Andrews ever seek such donations, as Labor's state assistant secretary or otherwise?

His office refused to provide any answers. It’s not the first time politicians on either side have sought to avoid politically sensitive questions. The former Coalition government's history of ducking and weaving on issues such as the East West Link, Fishermans Bend, and Matthew Guy's now- infamous Ventnor rezoning decision – which also involved dodging Ombudsman and Auditor-General's inquiries – are key examples. Part of the mountain of material tabled on Monday by the Andrews government into the Ventnor case. Credit:Jason South Indeed, the Coalition's record for unanswered Questions on Notice is even worse than Labor's, with several hundred more sitting idle in the lower house by the time parliament adjourned ahead of the 2014 campaign.

But the Andrews government said it would run a different kind of government. Loading “Labor will end this secret state and open our doors to the public," Attorney General Martin Pakula said in opposition, as he promised a new era of transparency. “No more hiding, no more excuses.” Since then, how has it fared?

To its credit, the government has initiated a number of important transparency reforms. More statistics are being published than ever before: from the performance of our health services to the inner workings of local councils. The Auditor General’s Office also has wider "follow-the-dollar" powers to investigate how public money is spent by private contractors on major projects. And Victoria, which once had one of the most lax political funding regimes in the developed world, now has strict rules on political donations. But on other fronts, the government’s pre-election pitch has fallen short. Victoria's Ombudsman found hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were used to pay for Labor campaigners called the "red shirts". Credit:Scott Barbour

As Opposition Leader, Andrews was so incensed by the rorting of then Liberal MP Geoff Shaw, that he called for Mr Shaw's expulsion from parliament after the Ombudsman confirmed he’d misused his parliamentary car. Yet, in government, Labor made three attempts to block the Ombudsman probing its own “rorts-for-votes” scandal. And when the inquiry was given the green light by the courts, the Premier and his lower house MPs refused to be interviewed. In opposition, Andrews was scathing of the East West Link, and particularly critical that the Napthine government blocked access in court to its traffic projections. But now the shoe is on the other foot, and Andrews is trying to sell his own road project, the West Gate Tunnel, his lawyers have used the same legal precedent to deny access to traffic information. "Despite promising 'No more hiding, no more excuses', the Andrews Labor Government has tried to hide crisis after crisis," said the Liberals' spokesman for government administration, Gordon Rich-Phillips.

His counterpart, Special Minister of State Gavin Jennings, who oversees Labor's transparency agenda, declined to be interviewed as part of The Age's Secret State series. Monash University politics lecturer Nick Economou says the government is essentially no different than many of its predecessors: in favour of disclosure in opposition; less so in office; fearful of political consequences if too much sensitive information becomes public. And cabinet secrecy itself is a longstanding hallmark of the Westminster system, he adds, and often with good reason. The difficulty is, while the conventions of cabinet have not changed, the public's expectations about what they should know continues to rise. Melbourne University political scientist Dr Mark Triffitt says that, rather than coming up with innovative ways to address the public's appetite to know more, "governments tend to retreat."