Surprises and snubs in Labor reshuffle

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After much speculation and the unceremonious dumping of some key frontbenchers, the Prime Minister has unveiled Labor's new frontbench.

And there have been some surprises.

The Albanese government's refreshed cabinet comes as the contest for both the Liberal and the National leadership gets more intense.

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvelis.

And I'm Jacob Grieber.

And Jacob, the Prime Minister, has just unveiled his front bench.

So we delayed recording the podcast so we can give you the newest, latest, and our interpretation of what has happened here.

Now, we spoke on Friday's emergency podcast about two key frontbenches that were turfed out due to the factions.

That's Ed Husick and Mark Dreyfus.

There have been some surprises, I I think.

I'll just go through the surprises and then we can tease it out.

Michelle Rowland has now become the new Attorney General.

She was the communications minister.

The health minister, Mark Butler, gets the NDIS added to his portfolio.

So more power to a key left ally and very good minister, Mark Butler, who is close to the Prime Minister.

Amanda Rishworth moves, and this is actually a really big role to the employment and workplace relations role.

That's why I was quite surprised by this.

Tanya Plibasek has moved to social services.

So she has lost that portfolio of environment, which I think we thought sort of knew was coming.

But let's analyse in a second what this means.

Murray Watt gets the environment and water portfolio.

And Annika Wells becomes the Minister for Communications and she keeps her Minister for Sport role.

There are a few other moves, including that Anne Arli,

she's new in cabinet, we knew that would happen.

Now she's Minister for Small Business.

She will also be the Minister for International Development and Multicultural Affairs.

Tim Ayres basically takes Ed Husick's role.

He's a key, so that's Industry and Innovation, Minister for Science.

He's a key ally too

of the Prime Minister.

Seems to me, I'm going to say what I think, that the Prime Minister has rewarded his allies.

How do you see it?

I think that's right, PK.

Just going through those names really quickly.

Obviously, Michelle Rowland, very competent, is a lawyer, makes sense, Attorney General.

Butler, as a health minister now plus ndis

is now one of the real engine rooms of reform in the government he's got to get the ndis under control the whole budget relies on that succeeding if it doesn't they're going to have to find somewhere else to get the money from higher taxes cuts elsewhere so that's a really big job for mark butler The tenure Plibosec move to social services, I would probably categorize that as a demotion, if not a sideways punt.

And very significantly, Murray Watt moving into her role, I think, is a statement of intent from the Prime Minister.

The nature positive laws hit the fence last term.

There was a lot of back and forth, no love lost between the Prime Minister and Tanya Plibasek on that.

There's a blame game that's been going on for several months.

Whose fault was it that it didn't get up?

Critics of Plibasek would feel that she had three years, she had an initial sort of agreement between business, mining groups, and environmental groups, and that fritted away, got caught up in the politics of the election.

Murray Watts, seen as a can-do sort of person, has fixed various problems.

He's also close to the Prime Minister from Queensland.

So you can, I think it's a statement of intent that the PM is going to have a fight in that space against the mining industry.

Other interesting ones, Pat Conroy, obviously

one of the higher performing ministers.

Annika Wells is being rewarded.

Hello from the ABC, Annika Wells.

And Tim Ayres, as you said, is a very close.

I guess you'd almost call him part of the Praetorian Guard for the Prime Minister.

Oh, he's 100% part of the Praetorian Guard of the Prime Minister.

So, yeah, that's my quick sort of run-through on that.

All the really big senior portfolios have been untouched.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

And there were some that he guaranteed in the election, so he obviously has honoured that.

And then some others that were also

looked after.

Look, there are other interesting moves that are just worth mentioning.

Rebecca White, who ran for the Tasmanian Premiership a few times, has now come straight into this role as a minister, as the Assistant Minister for Health, Indigenous Health and Women.

Peter Khalil is the new Assistant Defence Minister.

So that's interesting too.

And then Andrew Charlton, who I think is, you know, been long seen as a future treasurer or even prime minister, who knows?

I definitely don't know.

But

PM has sort of indicated, certainly to me, that he really rates him.

So I think.

Yeah, and he kind of even did there on the record, like publicly, didn't he, in the press conference where he talked about watching him.

And what he was referring to when he was talking about watching him at these international forums is him as a staffer, right?

Because he was obviously a chief advisor to Kevin Rudd and the Rudd government in economics.

So he's a rising economic star.

He's well known for that.

He's got this new cabinet secretary and assistant minister for science and technology role too.

I think that's really interesting too.

But I think it's fair to say, right?

So a couple of things.

And I want to get your thoughts on this, of course.

I think this is a substantial shake-up, which I think makes sense.

You need a bit of a substantial reset after two things.

finishing your first term and then getting a thumping majority.

So you think you need to sort of recalibrate things.

So they'll be at the back end departmentally.

You'll see the more detail that'll come out about the way they've put things in different departments with assistant ministers, right?

Like all little detail, isn't it, Jacob, where you can see how they see how things work.

The one that I think

he wasn't asked clearly about, but to me, that question about

will attorney generals and home affairs have the same mix of things that they have now.

Now, that was a question from one of our colleagues in the gallery to the PM.

What that's about is ASIO.

It currently sits with the Attorney General.

Under the former Morrison government it was with Home Affairs.

Labor tried to break that up.

That was seen as too powerful a department.

And if I was reading between the lines and the way the Prime Minister answered, I think that's heading back to

home affairs, which will go into Tony Burke's sort of immediate influence.

And the Prime Minister said, look, there were issues issues that arose out of information sharing during the caravan incident.

So if you recall that incident of a plot allegedly to blow up,

I guess it was aimed at the Jewish community.

There was a lot of back and forth there about how legit that was.

There was arguments between the New South Wales Police.

ASIO was there in the background.

So I think that was a very, that was a sort of a lesson to the government.

that

well for Tony Burke I'm told to get that back into his sort of embrace.

So that's like one of those machinery of government things.

ASIO's independent, but

the fact that he's alluded to information sharing, I think, is the hint.

Yes.

There.

I was also wondering about

the

importance of...

What do we think the importance of Tim Ayres is in

this coming sort of period for the government, do you think, Pika?

Well, they want to give him a much more expanded role.

He has a lot more power.

the future industry, AI space, productivity, he will be chiefly responsible for.

So a lot of power there.

But the government, I mean, I know because they're often offering him to me and on my shows as a key person.

The Prime Minister likes to have him out there.

He thinks he's a good communicator for the Prime Minister's agenda.

And this is a perfect segue, actually, to the guy he replaces, who's Ed Husick, who came on Insiders on Sunday and he's actually coming on Q ⁇ A tonight which is a very different setting where I'm sure the audience will want to understand the machinations of the Labor Party and what's happened to him.

So he's been dumped

and he didn't hold back did he?

He labelled the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Miles as a factional assassin.

Whoa.

That's one of those titles that gets stuck, doesn't it?

Every time anyone writes now about Richard Miles or his performance in the government or the Labour Party,

that tag is going to pop up.

I think it does enormous damage actually to Richard Miles, who might seem publicly kind of

affable, senior minister, deputy prime minister, defence minister, but this really puts a different prism on him.

Now,

the only historical precedent I can think of is back in the day when Labor went through its factional wars that decapitated prime ministers.

You know, they were referred to as the faceless men of the factions.

But Bill Shorten back then, much more junior, of course, was one of those factional men who was instrumental.

Now, he had to carry that like

the biggest baggage that dragged him down and I believe did him enormous damage even when he finally rose to opposition leader over those two terms.

I think that baggage actually came with him.

Now, Richard Miles, you know, it looks like the Prime Minister's not going to go anywhere.

Look at the thumping majority he just got.

But

don't be so naive, listeners, and I'm sure you're not.

It doesn't mean people don't position for the future.

Richard Miles would be wanting to position for the future, future Prime Minister.

There's others, Jim Chalmers, a lot of men on that list, but that's a whole other podcast as well.

But, you know, they all see themselves as future prime ministers, I think.

But this does him enormous damage, I think.

And the way that people work when they're hurt is that they generally want payback.

Now, is that just Ed Husick on his own?

I don't know.

What I hear is that the whole New South Wales right is pretty unhappy with the way he's conducted himself.

Now, he fought pretty hard for some of his factional allies, people like Sam Ray, who has now been appointed today by the Prime Minister, the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors.

Dan Molino enters the ministry as the Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services.

That's a big role.

It might be just Assistant, but it's the Assistant Treasurer.

So, all these new people, and maybe new is great.

Like, I'm not, you know, I can see that maybe it will refresh some elements.

But I reckon

I don't think this is going to end well for Labor.

I just saw this moment with Ed Husick and he doesn't hold back.

They wouldn't want this to be the new normal, would they, Jacob?

Because

I know what happened last time the factional wars happened and it didn't end well for Labor.

I mean it was interesting and the Prime Minister really not wanting to lean much into this argument, but saying, look, this is the way the system works.

The faction send me the lists and I then figure out where to put everybody.

He does still have the ability to intervene in that system.

Now, he hasn't done it pointedly, as you say, for Ed Usick and Dreyfus, the outgoing Attorney General, who is the other victim, I think, if you're going to...

claim that Richard Miles is

an activist pushing his faction.

He's also got rid of one of his own there in the form of the old Attorney General heading out Dreyfus.

So look, it gets ugly.

There are people who then have resentments.

But as I said, I think the other day, you know, this is one of those problems the Prime Minister has because he has so many people in the world.

That's a good problem.

So ambitious people.

And he's really refreshed the whole middle to sort of

foyer level, entry-level of the ministry with a whole bunch of new names who will all be under pressure to deliver.

They certainly will.

And, you know, they have to deliver in the second term.

I mean, you know, it's not like the public is just all relaxed.

The public did express that

they would like a lot of change and so the government has to deliver it.

Look, you know, my mail is that Tanya Blibasek is not sort of really upset or anything, that she's pretty happy with the change.

She probably wanted to move out of the environment portfolio given all the troubles that were happening, so I wouldn't be surprised about that.

She's still in cabinet.

Social services, of course, means essentially the welfare system.

And so I don't know how much extra money there is to do things like increase the doll or anything like that, Jacob, but it is it is bread and butter stuff for the Labor Party as well.

I've actually got a question for you there.

We did hear during the election campaign that childcare was one of the Prime Minister's second term priorities.

Who's taking care of that?

It's Senator Dr.

Jess Walsh.

He'll be the Minister for Early Childhood Education and Youth.

Now, that's obviously not in the cabinet, so you need a senior minister who does the advocacy in the cabinet, which is where all the power is for governments.

You know, so she would, she'll be quite key, I think, Tanya Plibisic around that table on some of these bread and butter labor reforms.

You know, I just don't think it's a nothing portfolio.

It's actually billions and billions of dollars of expenditure and a lot of reform.

You don't want to just set and forget with the welfare system.

You do need to look at it very closely to make sure it's creating incentive and it's working well.

So it does matter.

As you say, it's a lot of reform.

Yeah, I mean, I covered that area forensically for years.

So I have a very, like, I care a lot about it.

I think it's a really important area.

But so, you know,

all of these changes, though, the Prime Minister, when pressed about Tanya Plubasek, for instance, and other issues, I don't know, Jacob, he gives me the air of a man who, if I'm going to be frank, doesn't seem to really care that much about anyone's critique of him.

I reckon that's the best way to summarise it.

He really doesn't.

You know,

we won bigly, to quote Donald Trump.

And I get to now put my stamp on the way some of these things are.

In fact, he's excited, as he told us, because he's traveling to the Pope's inauguration.

Off to Rome, to the Holy See.

Now, he talked more about his Catholicism after the other Pope died during the campaign.

Now he gets to go.

He talked about how proud his mother would be.

So

he's kind of doing the things he loves to do, and that's what he's getting to do.

Just before we say goodbye, because of course, you know, another episode tomorrow will bring you more, but tomorrow's going to be a key day because the Liberals will determine their leader.

The party room is at 10 a.m.

on Tuesday.

I'll be there, Jacob, I'm coming to Canberra for it.

It's like a very pivotal moment for the Liberal Party.

They are at a crossroads really in many ways about the direction they take.

Jacinta Nabajiba Price revealing herself as the deputy to Angus Taylor.

Susan Lee pitching for the leadership as well.

It's a fierce,

fiercely contested contest.

It's very close as well.

The numbers shifting a bit, but but we know, for instance, Giselle Kaptarian has made her way as the member for Bradfield into the party room.

That gives, I think, the progressive side, the Susan Lee side an extra number.

Like all of this has been in flux.

But all I can say is, and I think you've probably observed this too, man, it's getting ugly.

Whoa, the briefing is ugly.

It is so dirty.

There's sort of the Liberals are going through, whoa, it's more than an existential crisis.

it's a catharsis over each other.

They have you picked some of the ugliness up?

I'm like,

look, and especially around Jacinta Nampajimpa Price coming across.

And by the way, my understanding is she is still to be actually formally

included into the Liberal Party.

There's still a sort of process that has to go on here.

She's been, she's no longer with the National Party.

They took care of that bit of paperwork quite quickly when she announced that she was moving.

So there's a little sort of interesting one there.

You've got

new kind of emerging powerhouses like, I guess, Dave Sharma from the progressive side, who you can tell they're not going to sit down and just take it this time.

The Conservatives have really, I would say, owned the mods for the last sort of, who knows, Pico, 10 years, certainly since Tony Abbott emerged.

But they are also equally determined to take the party and shape it in their sort of image and the way they want to run it and so

there's all sorts of things going on here one of the interesting arguments because this is ide ideological isn't it like it's there's the mods versus the the more conservative faction and there's an interesting argument also personality base not entirely not entirely personal as is always the case there with the coalition but here's an interesting argument we didn't lose the election

because

ideology we lost the election because we ran a terrible campaign.

Now, I'm hearing that from a Conservative player.

Me too.

And that's an interesting argument.

That will be,

if it comes down that they choose Angus Taylor, I think you're going to hear that narrative.

No, no, no, no.

We just got the mechanics wrong.

We had poor campaign craft and not the right people in the right jobs.

And we're not going to make that mistake.

So why would we sell out on our sort of convictions about conservatism in Australia?

Going to be fascinating.

Jacob, I've heard the same thing.

They,

you know, everyone uses the outcome to make their own case.

And of course, the moderates are making the case that...

the centrist middle Australia position has been lost over successive elections, not just this one, but this one accelerated it, and that that's the reason for the loss, as well as a poor campaign.

They're not arguing it was a great campaign, but they're saying the broader problem was the bigger thing.

But yeah, the Conservatives are like, it was a crap campaign.

We had terrible ads.

We had, you know, I've heard the list too, it was just all terribly executed, i.e., if we get that right, but still with a Conservative agenda, we can win.

And of course, they point to things like Tony Abbott winning.

And he did a thumping majority, which he did.

He won in a landslide.

He did well in Victoria, which is, you know, why I always believe no one is unelectable.

Tony Abbott was considered very unelectable for a long time.

You know that, and yet won in a landslide.

So I think, you know, I can see how they mount their argument on that front at least.

But I think there are some deeper rooted issues for the Liberal Party.

And if they don't explore them, I mean, they'll just be in opposition forever, right?

And that's, that's, you know, if they want to make that choice, that's up to them.

But it would seem to me unwise.

Look, at the same time today, just before we end, the Nationals, in fact, we, we couldn't wait any longer.

Oh, do we have an outcome?

As we record this, they're actually going in, yeah.

Yeah, there'll be an outcome.

If I'm wrong, I'll eat my hat, but I think Little Proud will probably win.

But Matt Canavan is mounting this challenge because he's putting Little Proud on notice on several issues, including net zero by 2050, which he thinks is bogus and wants to withdraw from.

But really, Jacob, it just shows that I think whatever direction the Nationals ultimately take, they will be perhaps a difficult partner for the Liberals, especially if they take a more moderate view, which I'm not sure they will, but if they do, and that's going to be tricky to manage, isn't it?

I would be surprised, quite frankly, if they go moderate off the back of this.

Canavan saying that Canavan is doing what he's doing to make sure that doesn't happen.

And think about it in these terms: there's exactly 20 people in that party room.

There'll be 19 when the Senate resumes because they're going to lose

a New South Wales senator who is a little proud number.

Now,

19 or 20, if Canavan gets to five, six or even seven votes, that's a real asterisk then next to David Littleproud's name.

You only need another two or three at that point and you can unseat him.

So this could be quite damaging for David Littleproud.

And it's also why, as I said, I don't think they're going to pivot.

to the more moderate side.

There's a big push on now from the Canavans to ditch net zero.

You're hearing ambivalent tones about net zero and renewables, even from the more moderate members of the National Party.

But as you listen to this, you'll know the answer, dear listener.

You'll know the answer.

And I suspect it's as we predicted if we're wrong.

Well, that's even more exciting, isn't it?

We'll have to reflect it the next time we meet.

Jacob, we're out of time.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Pico.

And tomorrow on the podcast, I'll be bringing you the details of the new Liberal Party leader and what the choice means for the future of the Liberals.

And of course, if you have a question, send a voice note to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

See you, Jacob.

See ya.