From Schwartz Media. I'm Michael Williams filling in for Daniel and Ruby. This is seven am. When Anthony Albanesi's new ministry was sworn in this week, it was overshadowed by the axing of Ed Husick and Mark Dreyfus. Husick in particular didn't go quietly, calling Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles a factional assassin. After a landslide victory with ninety three seats in counting, the Prime Minister had significant talent to choose from as he assembled his ministry, but the process
was limited by long standing factional rules. Today special correspondent for the Saturday Paper Jason Kutsukus on whether factions help or hurt the Labor Party and the warlords who won out its Wednesday, May fourteenth.
We have the largest ALP caucus in history since federation, a caucus brimming with capacity, talent and energy in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Jason Anthony Alberanize has unveiled his new ministry this week. What did you make of the picks?
Well, in a sense, it's made easy for the Prime Minister because Labour's factional system serves up the thirty people who will occupy the thirty minister or positions for him. That's predetermined. And of the thirty names that were elected to serve in the ministry by the Labor Caucus, I think the Prime Minister has done a pretty good job of putting the best talent where it is needed. Well.
I've changed a ranger portfolios around. I've got people who are I think in the best positions, and that's across the board. There's been I think of the cabinet, there's been multiple changes made. That's what happens.
Moving Tanya Plimusek across to Social Services I thought was a good move. He's given the National Disability Insurance Scheme to the Health Minister Mark Butler. I think that signals that there's a lot of reform still to be done to the way the NDIS is funded and the way it operates. And I think he's been given this extra portfolio for a reason to really try to put the NDIS on a long term stable footing. So I thought
that was a good move. I thought keeping Chris Bowen in the Climate Change and Energy portfolio was also very wise. I think Chris Bowen's an excellent Minister, and for such a complex portfolio, there's been very little in the way of actual controversy. Chris Bowen has really kind of mastered the detail of this portfolio, and I think it makes sense to leave him there. Michelle Rowland for Attorney Generals also probably quite a good move. And then some other
appointments in the outer of ministry. He's made Peter Khalil the Assistant Minister for Defense, which I think was also a just reward for Peter Khalil, who's got a long history in the national security space. And he of course held on to his seat of wills against a very determined challenge from the Greens there in Victoria, and so I think that was a good move as well.
Jason, this is an overwhelmingly positive report card from you, but I want to know you mentioned a couple of times the limitations on how much Albanez you can actually do. That you use the word predetermined by the factional plays behind the decisions, and I think we saw that in the acting of Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, We saw it in Science and Industry Minister Ed Husick also getting the job. So take us back, take us back a step to how that factional system works in the first place.
Well, I was reminded of what happened to another science minister in another Labor government, Barry Jones, after the nineteen ninety election. His center left faction had lost numbers in the election. Labour lost a lot of seats in Victoria in nineteen ninety and his faction decided that there wasn't enough space for all of their ministers to carry on in the new ministry, and Barry Jones was dumped from
the Hawk ministry. And there was a big outcry at the time, and Barry Jones himself said that he had been dumped because of a combination of geography, simple arithmetic, and bastardry. And I think that's true today of the factional system as it was then. It's the same system geography, So which state do you come from? Simple arithmetic as in, how many members does each faction have in the caucus? So how do you then divide up the ministries according
to that ratio? And then bastardry, because it's always unpleasant to see talented people Likery Jones or in this case this week, Mark Dreyfus and Ed Husick dumped from the ministry for no other reason than just, you know, really simple arithmetic and the ambition of others who are in the queue behind them, in this case the right faction in Victoria.
Absolutely, But when it comes to bastardry ed Husick had some particularly choice words for Richard Miles this week the Deputy PM. He called him a factional assassin.
We've had a sort of baar faced ambition and a deputy Prime minister wield a factional club to reshape the ministry.
What role did Males play in the movements?
Well, Richard Miles is the head of the Victorian writ is one of the most powerful right wing factional bosses in the country. And I think Richard Miles decided that he needed to keep members of his faction coming up through the ranks. So in the case of Daniel Molino, he's the new Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services. Daniel Malino is recognized I think across the Labor Party
has been one of their brightest economic minds. He's got a PhD in economics from Yale and so I think that's definitely a promotion that has been made on merit grounds. But then Richard Miles also wanted to make a space in the ministry for Sam Ray.
Stretching from Sunbury, Buller and Digger's Rest in the northeast, we clinch Hillside on the outer edge of Melbourne Suberbia, heading wests Melton is the geographical heart of Hawk before the Western Freeway drops down into the evocative agrarian valley where Bacchus Marsh lies at the convergence of the mighty Werribee and Loadedo rivers.
Sam Ray has I think one job in federal politics, and that is when the time is right, he's got to make sure that the numbers are there for Richard Miles to succeed Anthony Alberinezi as leader of the Australian Labor Party. So I think Richard Miles wanted to make sure that Sam got a promotion into the ministry as the Minister for Aging.
That's a let's just say, a fairly underwhelming set of qualifications to be a minister. It's wild to me, Jason, that you can have an election outcome like this. You have a Prime Minister writing high in the polls and yet that kind of authority, that mandate, if you like, come second to the factional system. So what happens if you don't join a faction and you're in the ALP, do you have any future?
Well, I think you end up like Andrew Lee. Andrew Lee is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. So he's what used to be called a parliamentary secretary. Andrew Lee's from one of the three seats in the Act. Thoughtful politician, He's someone who's written many books. He's a deep policy thinker, eminently qualified to serve in the actual ministry. But because Andrew is not a member of a faction, he has reached the upper limit of where he can go.
I guess the other side of that, Michael, is that people who who argue in favor of the factional system, they argue that it does provide stability, and it does provide a clear and kind of certain mechanism for promotion to the ministry that everybody knows where they stand in the queue. And I think Sam Ray is someone who could bring a similar level of kind of political pragmatism
to the Albanesi ministry. Just because he's a factional warlord doesn't mean he can't be a good politician or he can't contribute meaningfully to the government in a policy sense.
After the break, should Albanezi have overruled the factions? Jason? What does this mean for figures like Husick Andrefus arguably reach the pinnacle of their parliamentary careers. Can you see them sitting on the back bench happily and quietly issue.
Mark Corala, Mark drops refusing to say for the stream not.
One look where you have a process in the Libor party caucus. You've been watching it for some time?
Well, I think Mark Dreyfus, he is sixty eight, he served as Attorney general in two different governments, and I think he's had a very long and distinguished career. And I think he's also someone that is probably going to accept what's happened to him. And he has a still has, I think a role to play as a party elder. He is someone who is an enormous repository of political and legal knowledge. So I see Mark Drefus is still
playing a very constructive role within the Labor caucus. Yet Husick, on the other hand, I think he's someone who's still relatively young. He sees that he's got a lot of runway left in terms of his political career and he is going to really be feeling hard done by, and I think he is going to be a problem in the future for not just the Prime Minister, but especially for Richard Miles. Ed Musick is famous for being a very determined enemy because he holds his grudges. So I
think ed Musick will go to the back bench. He's he's not going to leave the Labor Party. He's not going to quit Parliament or anything. I think he's got one ambition now and that is to when he gets a chance, pay back Richard Miles for what happened to him this week.
The other move that's attracted a lot of commentary is the move of Tanya Plibersek from the Environment portfolio and into Social Services. Some media outlets are calling it a snub, even a demotion. So given we know this tension between Plybasek and Albanizi, what do you make of that decision to move her from one portfolio to the other.
Well, I think the relationship between Anthony Alberinezi and Tanya Plibasik is obviously very complicated. They go back a very long way when they were both I think just first joined the Labor Party all those decades ago. The fact that Tanniel Plipersek was moved from education to environment at the start of the last term became very much a focus of media attention. But I don't see being moved from environment to social services as a demotion at all.
And I think social services is a kind of iconic portfolio for labor ministers. It's the biggest spending portfolio. It's a portfolio where she can really demonstrate the labor values that she is probably more closely identified with than she was as a Minister for the Environment, and it clearly
had become untenable. I think for Plipisek to remain in Environment, she'd been seen to lose too many battles there and I don't think she would be the right person to then pick up and start negotiating again on the nature positive ledgislation that the government very much wants to get through the Senate in this term.
Murray what Minister for Environment and Water.
The Greens have already signaled that they're going to try to focus more on the environment as an issue in the next term, so they're going to be up against the Greens who again on that issue, and I think Labor has to demonstrate that it takes the environment seriously. So I think, yeah, Murray, what can really turn this into a winner for this second term Albanzi government.
From the outside, the fight for positions in the new ministry looked pretty ugly. You know, any time you hear the factions mentioned in the news, it feels like it's an example of people looking after their own interests rather than the good of the country. So, given Albanezi had such a win, like such a mandate, why do you think he didn't make the call to go against the factional system. Why didn't he assert his own authority?
Well? I think several things here, Michael. Firstly, despite the massive majority that Anthony Albinizi has won, he still has a limited amount of political capital to spend in this term, and I just think he didn't want to waste any of that capital trying to break down a system that is really entrenched in the Australian Labor Party.
Now.
The other part of it is that Anthony Alberizi is very much of the factions. He's been a factional warrior his whole political career, and I think he really believes in this system. He didn't see any need to try to challenge it or to break it down. And the other thing is that Anthony Alberinezi has come out of this unscathed. He can point to Richard Miles as the person that is primarily responsible for cutting down Ed Husick
and Mark Dreyfus. So it hasn't cost him anything. He hasn't spent any of that very precious political capital that he has got to up his sleeve.
Never hurts to have an assassin nearby when you need one, Jason, thank you so much for your.
Time, Michael, a pleasure speaking with you.
Also in the news, Susan Lee has been named as the new leader of the Liberal Party, with Ted O'Brien as her deputy. Lee is the first woman to hold the position. Immediately after she became leader, Lee's staff kicked Peter Dutton's staff out of the Liberal campaign's WhatsApp group.
We'll have a full report of what Susan Lee's leadership will mean for the future of the Liberal Party tomorrow, and Jacinta namp and jimper Price says the outcome of yesterday's Liberal leadership contest is not the one she wanted, but that she's still committed to the Liberal Party, Price affected from the Nationals to stand as Angus Taylor's deputy. After Taylor was unsuccessful securing the leadership, Price withdrew from the contest. In a statement following the result, Senator Price
said unity now must prevail. I'm Michael Williams. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.