Anthony Albanese must have a great sense of humour to have come up with the ministerial shake-up he has done. Ripped from the pages of a Yes Minister script, it is packed with irony.
His Home Secretary has been relegated to the homelessness portfolio, which actually seems appropriate.
Clare O’Neil remains in the cabinet in her new and much-reduced role, which includes housing, ensuring she will fail again as Labour fails to meet its promised target of 1.2 million new homes in its first five years in power.
Failed immigration minister Andrew Giles (who was responsible for the failed Directive 99 debacle that allowed murderers and rapists to walk free from detention) has retained an outside ministerial role as expected.
But he has lost his immigration portfolio, and that is fair.
Giles has been moved into a new training and development area following the retirement of Brendan O’Connor. Giles is just the sort of person you wouldn’t want running such an important portfolio, given his track record of failure.
However, Albo has put him in charge of training the nation.
The Cabinet has also downgraded the portfolio, angering the business community. This is the government that held a summit on skills and training when it came to power to demonstrate how seriously it takes these matters. That’s as far as it goes.
Anthony Albanese must have a great sense of humour to have thought of yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle, writes political editor Peter van Onselen
New Home Office chief Tony Burke, above, has a lot on his plate. Meanwhile, Clare O’Neil has been seconded from the Home Office to the homelessness portfolio.
The Prime Minister insists there has been no problem at Home Affairs and Immigration, despite having sacked both ministers from their portfolios and gutted the once all-powerful Home Affairs Department and shifted responsibility for ASIO back to the Attorney General’s office.
If you believe Albo when he says that changes are not a consequence of failure then you will believe anything.
Tony Burke has been moved to the remaining Home Affairs role, retaining his responsibilities for the arts and as Leader of the House of Representatives.
So Burke will be forced to come down hard on borders and illegal asylum seekers before putting on his best suit and heading to the opera, where the chattering classes can explain to him, over a nice glass of champagne at intermission, why his policies lack nuance.
Speaking of social cohesion, the Labor MP whose Melbourne electorate office has been firebombed and closed for months has been appointed special envoy for social cohesion.
Peter Khalil will be able to carry that message to the pro-Palestinian protesters who continue to make threats in and around his office.
This new term, “special envoy,” has become Albo’s way of handing out extra goodies without giving the capable deputies who have been languishing in the back-row seats real duties in the front-row seats. Like at children’s parties where every child gets a prize.
In essence, this is an invented post. Three new special envoys have been created, one of which has been assigned to Andrew Charlton. The promotion of this Oxford-PhD economist and successful self-taught entrepreneur makes sense, except that the prime minister has put him in charge of “digital resilience”, not anything remotely economic.
I suspect that Treasurer Jim Chalmers – who has a PhD in politics, not economics – would not want someone so qualified and with special envoy powers hanging around his economic portfolio. So Albo will keep Dr Charlton busy in an area that has no bearing on his considerable expertise.
The biggest issue Australians are concerned about is the state of the economy, but the restructuring did not change any of those portfolios at all. For example, no new role was created focusing on cost of living challenges.
Albo hopes that by not changing his finance team (neither the treasurer, nor the finance minister, nor the deputy treasurer have any kind of financial or economic qualifications), a message of stability will be conveyed, that they are already doing a good job and that no changes are necessary.
It’s a risk, given that Australians are having to endure high inflation and potentially further rate increases fuelled by decisions made by the current financial team.
Presenter, Special Envoy for Digital Resilience, Dr Andrew Charlton
Elsewhere, Pat Conroy has been promoted to cabinet, but his ministerial role has not changed. He remains in charge of aid for the South Pacific, a role that allows him to sit back and watch as Albo sends $600m to impoverished Papua New Guinea – not to help the needy and tackle violence and disease, but to help create a commercial rugby team.
The role of assistant minister in Australia becoming a republic has been scrapped entirely, as Daily Mail Australia warned would happen months ago.
This was bound to happen given that after the failure of the Voice referendum, Albo said he would not seek a vote on a republic in the short term or in the distant future.
Linda Burney’s departure from Indigenous affairs following her failure to promote The Voice sees Senator Malarndirri McCarthy take over the role, ensuring an Indigenous MP continues to oversee the portfolio.
Along with the promotion of Senator Jenny McAllister (responsible for cities) to the foreign office, it also ensures there are two additional ministers in the upper house, bringing the total to six, to help spread the load.
There are many other changes to the list of candidates that the Prime Minister says he will take to the next election. The most notable is Murray Watt’s move from Agriculture to Industrial Relations.
Once again, business has been aghast at the policy changes made in that portfolio, but knowing this government, they will no doubt find more ways to adjust industrial laws in favour of unions. However, Watt is only likely to do so after the next election.
