On Monday, August 13, Parliament resumed after the six-week winter break. The then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, immigration minister Peter Dutton and others selected by The Australian Financial Review Magazine's power panel filed one by one into a meeting room in Parliament House to pose for their photographic portraits. It was just over two weeks since the Coalition's catastrophic showing in the July 28 byelection for the Queensland seat of Longman, which is adjacent to Dutton's marginal seat of Dickson.

When the panel had met on August 2, Dutton had been identified as one of the nation's most powerful figures. Along with fellow conservative Mathias Cormann, he helped keep the Liberal Party right wing under control and was "trying to make Turnbull work". It was Dutton who conceived last year's postal ballot on same-sex marriage after the Senate blocked legislation for a plebiscite. He opposed same-sex marriage but knew the issue had to be addressed and that the public would vote Yes. Unless it was done in a manner in which the conservatives, who were opposed, were at least given a chance to make their case, rather than just allow a simple vote in Parliament, Turnbull would have been torn down last year. Dutton was a fixer.