As the dust settles, however temporarily, in the Liberal Party, Scott Morrison’s new ministry will be sworn in and get down to work. And while there are new faces as well as old hands in the same roles — continuity with change! — it’s clear that some powerful figures have suffered a blow.
Losers
Peter Dutton: From would-be rooster to potential feather duster in one vote, Dutton’s inept challenge last week belonged in a Keystone (Queensland) Cops two-reeler. And while he’s been restored to Home Affairs, David Coleman has been elevated to Immigration Minister under him. Dutton is now damaged goods.
Julie Bishop: Bishop got just 11 votes in last Friday’s ballot and none at all from her WA colleagues. Leaked WhatApp messages since suggest she was the target of strategic voting and what she called “dirty tricks”. But a would-be PM should be orchestrating that kind of thing, not falling victim to it — it’s basic political survival.
Bishop will likely leave politics, and do so bizarrely well-regarded, but her bungled push for the leadership is an apt symbol of a career marked by errors, colossal misjudgments and inadequacy for the job.
Mathias Cormann: Dutton’s fellow member of the conservative guard around Turnbull has been badly tarnished by the events of last week. Hitherto known for integrity and loyalty, Cormann backed Turnbull unequivocally on Wednesday but a few hours later was telling him he’d lost the partyroom. Friday’s ballot numbers would show that if he, Mitch Fifield and Michaelia Cash had stuck with Turnbull, the latter would still be PM.
There’s a silver lining though — Cormann has once again had the burden of Special Minister of State taken back off him (Alex Hawke gets that), leaving him to do his day job of Finance Minister.
Greg Hunt: Hunt is fortunate to retain his health portfolio. He’s a loser on another front — he’s now seen as a disloyal, hollow man who seems to be good at swearing at and trying to bully older women but rotten at backing his leader or doing the numbers for himself.
Michael Sukkar: Dutton’s numbers man has paid the price for a failed coup and been sent to the backbench. But he is young enough and good enough to come back.
Mitch Fifield: Keeps communications but loses Deputy Senate leader to Simon Birmingham, who personned up on Thursday and filled in for Cormann as Senate leader and didn’t too a bad job. The new Cormann-Birmingham leadership team in the Senate is the kind of conservative/moderate, Duttonite/loyalist balance that is the best part of Morrison’s reshuffle.
Michaelia Cash: Chuckles was Fifield’s colleague in hiding behind Cormann when they abandoned Turnbull, and got dumped to Small Business — but more because she’s a grave liability than as punishment. Meantime, we’re waiting to hear when the DPP will do her job and charge someone from Cash’s office for breaking the law.
Winners
Marise Payne: No more being leaked against by certain ministers coveting her portfolio. She loses the career graveyard of defence and gets foreign affairs. She already knows the US defence establishment, so she’ll start off well-positioned in Washington.
Christopher Pyne: Stuck by Turnbull, and finally gets defence. The always cheerful Pyne will have an extra spring, or perhaps a martial rhythm, in his step.
Sussan Ley: Back into the outer ministry, leaving the way clear for an eventual return to cabinet if the government lasts and she wants to go round in Farrer again. The best health minister of recent years is badly needed in a government signally short of talented women. Or any women, really.
Stuart Robert: The China Syndrome is back. As numbers man for Morrison, Robert expected a reward, but the assistant treasurership places a man who failed to trouble the scorers on ministerial achievement during his last stint dangerously close to actual responsibility in an important portfolio. It’s not even clear at the moment how financial services will be handled within the government.
Will be missed
Craig Laundy: The excellent Western Sydney minister and Turnbull stalwart — it was Laundy who flanked Turnbull with Arthur Sinodinos as he entered the partyroom on Friday — has knocked back a portfolio and might bail out of politics altogether. It would be a pity. Laundy is a genuine liberal in a party increasingly devoid of them, competent, loyal and hard-working; his type is needed more than ever now in politics.
After last week, though, it wouldn’t surprise if he’d had a gutful of the lot of them.
What do you think of the cabinet reshuffle? Send your responses to boss@crikey.com.au.
Angus Taylor, the Snake from Hume….betrays his leader and gets a promotion.
But Rab, he went to Kings, John Anderson’s alma mater. Some of our best contributors to the public life of our fair land passed through those hallowed halls, plus do you know what it costs for that kind of start in life, surely a blokes entitled to a bit of public pie.
Ley – best health minister for years – where have you been the past years – she is the one who should have stopped the billions wasted on the My Health project – at that stage it would have been good for the stretched budget to can it. Now they have so much invested got to force people to use it . Bernard you are not completely over your portfolio. Just like the Politicians.
Is the competition for that gong Dutton and Hunt?
Bottom’s Up. Here’s to a healthy Gold Coast Real Estate sector!
A group of pious men. Mainly men. Lots of bitter, spent, out of date, disappointed, jealous men. (LNP doesn’t let most of their women play, Cash was there sticking the knife in, but with a history LNP women like Fierravanti-Wells, O’Dwyer, Bronwyn Bishop, Sophie Mirabella, they’re not going to help much anyway. I guess that ‘free earings’ Julie Bishop was an exception to a degree.) These religious men would have all spent yesterday on their knees, coming to the conclusion that the devil made them do it. No jealousy, revenge, ego, selfserving greed, borderline madness due to too tight budgie smugglers, nothing like that. It was the devil. And their failure was not their fault. It was the will of god, or that bastard the easter bunny.
The biggest disappointment for me was to see Mathias Cormann go from appearing to be a calm, dignified, staunch lieutenant of his leader, to Dutton’s puppy dog in twelve hours. Mathias Quisling shows that he really does have the integrity of a true politician. None whatsoever.
Christopher Pyne, as expected, minced through the shitstorm in his telfon suit maintaining that he was best friends and totally loyal to … just everyone really.
Perhaps it’s time for the LNP to seek advice on stratagem from such brains as Pauline Hanson, or Bob Katter. They begin to look intelligent by comparison. What we have is change but no change.
And by the way Tony;
Proverbs 24:29
Do not say, “Thus I shall do to him as he has done to me; I will render to the man according to his work.”
Read your book
How much longer does the electorate have to endure religious freaks, and their pet cults? It would seem the greater the enthusiasm for the false lies of the candidate the greater the subsequent fall into a bubbling morass of ineptitude.
Good question, Venise. How the hell do they get there in the first place? They’re far from representative of Australia. Here we are, one of the most irreligious countries in the world, and our “representatives” open parliament with effing prayers. It’s ridiculous!
Not a good idea to generlise from the perspectives of your mates to the country as a whole Charlie (and I am a confirmed atheist). Spend a bit of time on the Oz Bureau or Stats website and you will see that the country is quite “religious”. You will find much more detail in the archives of Crikey when the virtues of sodomy were being discussed vis a vis homosexual marriage.
It would appear that prayers, over recent decades, have been utterly ineffectual as to the probity of Ministers so, in that respect, prayers are an anachronism.
It was fortunate that opponents didn’t claim that SSM stood for Sodomist Sapphist Marriage.
well it does now; at least the abbreviation has earned its place as an equivalent and is a candidate for the Macquarie (but each to their own).
“Hey Abbott” can read? I still recall him saying Canadia. Rhodes Scholar, more like a Rhode Island Red. One of the biggest jokes as Prime Minister we had since Big Ears McMahon.
Yep, Angus Taylor, a plotter is rewarded with Energy, which *has* to be that Morrison has accepted demands that energy be given to a right wing ugly. Much like Barnaby Joyce demanding Agriculture and ruining and rorting it to the hilt (on that – Federal ICAC now!).
He was a speaker at the ‘Wind Power Fraud’ Rally with Alan Jones in c. 2013. All you need to know…wait for more utter bullshit about the cost and reliability of renewable energy and the need for more ‘baseload’, which means subsidised coal, including the sheer idiocy of trying to keep clapped out power stations going long after their maintenance life is over.
And….Michaelia Cash still in Cabinet! The cupboard is bare…or perhaps she threatened to talk to Scott from less than 2 metres away and he was worried about going deaf.
Have no fear! Abbott’s sister is going to stand in Wentworth. Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes listening to her speak will confirm that she’s just as big a ratbag as her brother.
The Liberal party appears to be a shit magnate.
After all, the Shit Magnate, mudorc, does own the LimitedNewsParty so I suppose that is the magnetism.
Keeping the crooked Cash in a ministerial position is almost certainly going to continue causing major issues for the Librorts Party, as will the re-elevation of Dutton the Wrecker.