Bill Shorten needs a strong performer to fill the Home Affairs portfolio
The Liberals lost a star in Julie Bishop this week, but Bill Shorten needs to find one to fill the Home Affairs portfolio if he wins government at the upcoming election.
Opinion
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A decade ago, almost to the day, Julie Bishop stood aside as Shadow Treasurer in the Malcolm Turnbull-led Liberal opposition.
After a few stuff-ups in the role, she had come under relentless pressure from a group of male colleagues who became known as the “Big Swinging Dicks”. They wanted Joe Hockey in the job.
It was a blow for Bishop in an otherwise stellar political rise and she was forever saddled with the accusation she couldn’t handle a tough domestic portfolio.
Ten years on, Bishop announced her decision to quit politics on Thursday, coincidentally at the end of a heated Question Time debate about her old rival Joe Hockey.
The details are contested, but the now ambassador to the United States is accused of helping line up a meeting, which he also attended, for a company trying to score a government contract.
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Hockey owns a good chunk of shares in the company, Helloworld, which is also run by a big Liberal donor.
How much of this saga will penetrate the consciousness of undecided voters is unclear, but it did give Bill Shorten an excuse to finish an otherwise messy week for Labor with a strong parliamentary performance.
The announcement from Bishop that followed was a further setback for the government.
Her departure isn’t exactly a shock. Few thought she would stick around after Turnbull was removed as prime minister and Bishop was humiliated in the leadership ballot that followed.
Nonetheless, it was confirmation the Liberal Party is losing its most popular and experienced woman.
With Bishop and Kelly O’Dwyer leaving at the election, Michaelia Cash and Melissa Price virtually in hiding, and Marise Payne making only rare media appearances, the government has a problem heading into the campaign.
There will be very few female faces mounting the Liberals’ case on breakfast TV, talkback radio and the evening news.
There are plenty of capable Liberal blokes who will fill the airwaves and the Nationals’ Bridget McKenzie will do her bit from the regions.
But for a party with a perceived “woman” problem, the Liberals need some actual women fronting the campaign cameras.
It’s too late now to reshuffle the ministry and promote more women, even if there are looming vacancies with the departures of O’Dwyer, Nigel Scullion and Michael Keenan.
The time for change was the end of last year. Unfortunately for Morrison, the resignations came in the new year.
It’s also too late for Bill Shorten to change his senior line-up, despite a glaring hole right now.
Labor does not have a Home Affairs spokesman, and Shorten couldn’t say this week who would take that job in government.
This is now one of the most senior roles in government, overseeing national security and intelligence, cyber security, border protection and emergency management.
The minister exercises sweeping powers and voters deserve to know who that would be.
Shorten should have filled this role a long time ago. Now it’s too close to the campaign to reshuffle.
The Labor leader criticised the Home Affairs Department this week over the $423 million Paladin contract and the “mistakes” admitted in relation to the detention of refugee footballer Hakeem al-Araibi in Thailand.
Shorten has no plans, however, to unscramble the Home Affairs egg completely. There will be a Home Affairs Minister under a Labor government and the super-portfolio will remain intact.
He says he has “several good people” who could fill the role. Two stand out: Brendan O’Connor and Richard Marles.
Marles is the more likely the candidate, despite his shocker of an interview with my Sky News colleagues Kieran Gilbert and Laura Jayes this week when he suggested the “collapse” of the thermal coal market was a “good thing”.
This was an uncharacteristic blunder for Marles. To his credit he quickly apologised, even if the damage had already been done.
Marles is one of Labor’s most hawkish and pro-US national security pragmatists. He took on the difficult and thankless task of dragging Labor into supporting boat turn-backs when he held the immigration portfolio.
Shorten may be reluctant to shift Marles from the Defence portfolio, but he needs a heavy-hitter in Home Affairs. This is seen as Labor’s most vulnerable policy front and therefore needs someone strong.
Back in the ’80s, Bob Hawke knew national security was a perceived weakness for Labor, so he put a heavy-hitter and rising star into Defence: Kim Beazley. The move showed Hawke was serious about the portfolio. It also helped that Beazley, a military buff, desperately wanted the job.
Years later Beazley desperately wanted to be prime minister, but never made it.
Fellow West Australian Julie Bishop leaves parliament now with a similar unfulfilled ambition.
Bishop is unlikely to play much of a role in the coming campaign, but the Liberals need to find some women to step up, amid the few in its ranks.
Originally published as Bill Shorten needs a strong performer to fill the Home Affairs portfolio
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