The prime minister is making no admissions. To understand the real story of his reshuffle, heed less what he says and more what he has done.
And what he has done – because he couldn’t avoid it – is signpost his areas of greatest political weakness and effectively, if not actually, concede that in designing his ministry two years ago, he made mistakes.
The republic part-portfolio is gone. If that was ever going to wake from its slumber and start inching towards a required referendum, the emphatic rejection last year of a certain other proposition put paid to that for the foreseeable future.
From that moment, what always looked like an indulgence became a white elephant. With two more senior ministers also in the defence portfolio, the assistant minister for defence, veterans’ affairs and the republic, Matt Thistlethwaite, needed more to do. Now Thistlethwaite becomes the assistant minister for immigration. Lucky him.
Handily, the abolition also means nobody has to explain the awkward ongoing role of the assistant minister for an Australian republic to the king and queen when they visit in October. So there’s that.
Thistlethwaite’s new job is a pointer to the other big fix-it-up. The problem portfolio of home affairs and its achilles heel, immigration, will be joined up under a new single cabinet minister in Tony Burke, one of Anthony Albanese’s key political lieutenants. Incumbent Andrew Giles’ junior ministry is gone and the assistant minister will pick up whatever doesn’t need to go across Burke’s desk.
But in agreeing to catch the hot potato, Burke has either demanded or been offered a sweetener. He gets to keep the arts, considered a ministerial prize. How the arts fit with home affairs is anyone’s guess – that community will doubtless be thrilled at its new security status.
While not even Giles can be surprised that he is being moved, senior portfolio minister Clare O’Neil is likely less than ecstatic at what the opposition will say proves both failed in their jobs.
Burke’s home affairs responsibilities will be slightly different to what O’Neil had, with domestic spy agency Asio moving back to the attorney general’s portfolio where it used to be before the Coalition-created mega-agency existed.
Giles moves sideways into skills and training, which is no longer the cabinet-level portfolio it was under the retiring Brendan O’Connor. That was an anomaly mostly about boosting O’Connor, who hails from the troublesome bit of the prime minister’s left faction. It now reverts to type, folded into workplace relations with a junior minister to help out. Albanese can say, hand on heart, that Giles is not being demoted.
He is saying the same about O’Neil, who gets the politically important housing and homelessness portfolio. No doubt, Albanese hopes her combined communications and analytical skills – the latter honed in her pre-politics career with McKinsey and wielded effectively in a migration system restructure – can turn housing around as an issue and claw back ground the government has ceded to the Greens.
You can hear his argument to O’Neil now: “It’s an economic portfolio and a big opportunity for an ambitious minister.” And it is, though she might not love the way it has come to her.
Tasmanian Julie Collins, whose skills are greater in negotiation than public prosecution, leaves that job for agriculture and small business, closer to the responsibilities she held in opposition. And Senator Murray Watt, a left-wing hardhead from Queensland and a good performer, takes over Burke’s employment and workplace relations portfolio, where there is unfinished legislative business and one very cranky union in the CFMEU.
Albanese has rewarded New South Wales factional ally and friend Pat Conroy by expanding the defence bits of his junior defence industry portfolio and lifting it into cabinet, still paired with international development and the Pacific. With overall cabinet numbers remaining at 23, Conroy takes the spot vacated by Linda Burney, meaning it’s status quo for NSW but O’Connor’s spot goes to Northern Territory senator Malarndirri McCarthy, leaving one less for Victoria.
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The prime minister has also found creative ways to accommodate some up-and-comers, including by disappearing one more job and combining bits of others. McCarthy’s assistant ministry in Indigenous affairs has been abolished as she takes on Burney’s cabinet-level job , with assistant health minister Ged Kearney adding Indigenous health to hers.
Several assistant ministers have expanded roles and three newcomers join them: West Australian Josh Wilson and a pair of Victorians, Kate Thwaites and Julian Hill. The double elevation is a kind of compensation for Victoria losing one place at the cabinet table.
Albanese has also created three “special envoy” jobs focused on social inclusion, veterans and northern Australia, and cybersecurity. They go to Victorian Peter Khalil, the NT’s Luke Gosling and Andrew Charlton from western Sydney.
Albanese says these are “thought” jobs to harness the trio’s talent and deep pre-politics experience, like the position former senator Pat Dodson had in reconciliation. Coincidentally, all three are also in vulnerable seats where they could use a profile boost.
With Burney and O’Connor stepping down ahead of retiring from politics, Albanese had more room for tweaking through Tasmanian Carol Brown’s decision to return to the backbench to focus on her health. Brown received a cancer diagnosis before the last election.
The prime minister says team members stepping down “does provide you with an opportunity for others to step up”.
“Good governments aim high, they work hard and they draw on a diversity of talent,” he said, unveiling the changes. “And that certainly is what drives me and that’s what drives the changes I’m announcing today after more than two years – the most stable period, might I say, of government … certainly in living memory, if not forever.”
But the changes themselves demonstrate that the new lineup is at least as much about redress and reinforcement as refresh – however Albanese might choose to explain it.