The trouble with winning an election landslide is the victorious party has many more people angling for cabinet ministries.
Inevitably, some are going to be disappointed, feelings will be hurt and careers will be cut short.
But if winning up to 93 of the Australian parliament’s 150 lower house seats is a problem for Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese, it’s not as bad as the headache facing the opposition: the Liberal-National coalition, a conservative alliance reduced to its worst result of about 44 seats (some are still too close to call).
Making a bad situation worse, the Liberal side of the coalition is leaderless, with Peter Dutton having lost his Brisbane seat to Labor. Labor also won Greens leader Adam Bandt’s seat.
Though Albanese has more power than any previous Labor prime minister, he is answerable to the left and right factions of the party, which in turn are tied to support from affiliated unions.
The left, from which Albanese comes, gained more seats and is looking for an extra cabinet position. The right, led by deputy prime minister Richard Marles, has already shown how ruthless it can be by telling attorney-general Mark Dreyfus and industry minister Ed Husic that their time in cabinet is over.
The major difficulty with that is Dreyfus, who is Jewish, is the most pro-Israel Labor MP, and Husic, whose parents migrated from Bosnia, is the only Muslim in cabinet. Dropping both at the same time risks looking like an oblique comment on the Middle East.
Albanese could have made a “captain’s pick” to retain one or both, but chose not to. He has also not commented on whether environment minister Tanya Plibersek will retain her portfolio. Though they are both from the left of the party and represent neighbouring Sydney electorates, Albanese and Plibersek are not close and she is seen as a future Labor leader.
But when the new cabinet is sworn in next week, Plibersek will still be included as Albanese will calculate that she is better kept close at hand than stewing on the backbenches. But she is unlikely to remain as environment minister, as Albanese has previously watered down some of her proposals.
The Liberals will meet to pick a new leader on Tuesday. With Dublin-born Keith Wolohan, who was tipped as a future leader, having lost his Melbourne seat and other front runners having dropped out, this is a two-horse race between deputy party leader Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.
In the expectation that Taylor would be a bigger threat, Labor treasurer Jim Chalmers criticised him while votes were being counted on election night last Saturday, questioning his grasp of economics.
Even more damning for Taylor is that one of his own, Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, did the same thing.
“I have concerns about his capability. I feel we have zero economic policy to sell,” she told ABC radio. “I don’t know what he’s been doing for three years. There was no tax policy, there was no economic narrative.”
Labor will hope Ley is chosen as she would be an easier target, given her unorthodox beliefs and an expenses scandal.
Ley, who changed her name from Susan to Sussan, explained in 2015: “I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality. I worked out that if you added an s I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring. It’s that simple.”
Her life got a touch too exciting when she had to resign as health minister in 2017 after using a taxpayer-funded trip to buy an apartment on Queensland’s Gold Coast. While Labor questions Taylor’s grasp of numbers, Ley’s grasp of numerology and expenses will be easy to attack.
Meanwhile, the opposition coalition’s supporters in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers and Sky News are reeling at the biggest conservative loss they’ve seen.
Andrew Bolt, who is a Sky News presenter and News Corp columnist, published a piece last Saturday telling Australians they had made a mistake. “No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong,” he wrote.
Bolt said the coalition lost because it “refused to fight the ‘culture wars’”. This was a reference to issues such as identity politics, Aboriginal policy and immigration. His Sky colleague Peta Credlin, a former chief of staff to ex-Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, later backed Bolt, saying “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.
