Dutton overlooks deputy in surprise frontbench pick, creates gender parity with Labor

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has made a surprise pick for his foreign affairs spokesman, overlooking his deputy Sussan Ley in a reshuffle that maintains the power of Liberal Party moderates and matches the number of women on Labor’s frontbench.

Announcing the changes on Saturday, Dutton revealed NSW’s David Coleman will move from the communications portfolio into the foreign affairs role vacated by retiring senator Simon Birmingham.

He also handed a new role to Liberal Voice to parliament rebel Julian Leeser, who will be assistant foreign affairs spokesman, a move first reported by this masthead. Some right-wingers oppose Leeser’s return to the frontbench, but Dutton has rewarded him for his high-profile pro-Israel campaign, which has won him favour among conservatives.

Opposition frontbencher David Coleman with Coalition leader Peter Dutton last year.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Coleman, the member for Banks in south-west Sydney, is aligned with the moderates but is not a factional player. He has a relatively low profile but is respected as a sharp policy thinker inside the party, having led the Coalition’s campaign on social media restrictions.

In an interview in April last year, Coleman was the first Coalition MP to raise a social media ban for children under 16, a policy later adopted by Labor.

He is also arguably the party’s most active MP in the Chinese community, which is a key part of his electorate. The Chinese diaspora swung hard against Morrison in 2022, and some MPs were worried about putting China hawk James Paterson, the opposition’s home affairs spokesperson, in the role.

Another NSW MP, Melissa McIntosh, will rise from the outer shadow ministry to replace Coleman in the communications portfolio. Young Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler will replace retiring frontbencher Paul Fletcher in the frontbench position of government services, the digital economy and science, and the arts.

The promotion of McIntosh and Chandler to the upper deck of the frontbench takes the number of women in Dutton’s alternative cabinet to 11, the same number as Labor, though the opposition has far fewer women backbenchers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sought to frame Dutton as retrograde and uninterested in policies that benefit women, among whom Labor has an advantage in polling, creating impetus for Dutton to prove himself to female voters.

Dutton spent weeks mulling the tricky frontbench re-jig that represented a test of his authority. Moderates demanded they maintain sway after small-l liberals Fletcher and Birmingham retired, while conservatives and Queenslanders were also seeking greater representation.

Right-wing factional leader and key Dutton ally Tony Pasin was promoted from an assistant spokesman to the outer ministry as spokesman for roads and road safety. Another conservative, Western Australia senator Matt O’Sullivan, was made assistant spokesman for education.

Ley, who as deputy is by convention able to pick her portfolio, was overlooked for the foreign affairs role in part because senior party figures believed a shift would stop her playing her key role as a daily domestic attack dog. Frontbenchers Dan Tehan, Jane Hume and Paterson all put their hands up for the plum foreign role. The wide field of senior MPs caused a headache for Dutton, whose eventual pick, Coleman, was not initially seen as an option.

Paterson will keep his portfolio but has been elevated to the seven-person leadership team along with frontbencher Michael Sukkar who gains a spot by replacing Fletcher as manager of opposition business, as first reported by this masthead. Sukkar and Paterson are two of Dutton’s closest advisers and represent a changing of the guard in the leadership group, having replaced two older, and more moderate, MPs in Birmingham and Fletcher.

Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will take on an additional portfolio of government efficiency, paving the way for greater involvement in non-Indigenous political debates and mirroring Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s focus on cutting the size of government.

Dutton’s confirmation of his frontbench will allow the opposition to focus on prosecuting Labor at the upcoming election, due by May. Labor is on track to lose its majority, according to this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the National Press Club on Friday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“This is an important body to bring together. We have to bring together a diversity of talent,” Dutton said, using his press conference to attack what he said was Albanese’s thread-bare agenda.

“The prime minister doesn’t have anything by way of achievement of the past three years to talk about ... no Australian could tell you what he’s done.”

On Friday, Albanese sharpened his feud with Dutton over personal strength and policy vision during the cost of living crisis, using a National Press Club address to assure voters he would go to the election with a second-term agenda to lift household incomes.

“I’ll tell you what weakness is – weakness is not having the guts to come to the National Press Club,” he said.

In a term that has seen few policy feuds within the opposition, reshuffles and resignations have created some of the biggest headaches for Dutton, who is neck and neck with Albanese in polling but starts from 19 seats behind the 76 required to win a majority.

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