Kristina Keneally? Seriously Albo, what were you thinking?
Instead of installing someone hard-line on immigration to measure up to Peter Dutton, Anthony Albanese chose someone who has publicly railed against offshore detention, writes Caroline Marcus.
Scott Morrison will be Prime Minister forever, won’t he?
That’s the only logical conclusion to be reached after Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese announced his shadow ministry, clearly a deliberate attempt at self-sabotage.
How else do you explain the promotion of a federal novice and vocal offshore detention critic such as Kristina Keneally to the all-important portfolio of Home Affairs?
Or rewarding the biggest loser of Labor’s “unlosable” election with a spot in shadow cabinet, where it’ll be all the easier to lob grenades at his long-time foe?
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Albanese is evidently too preoccupied with striking the perfect gender balance to concern himself with such trivialities as picking the best people for the gig.
“There will be 12 men and 12 women sitting around the shadow Cabinet table,” he announced proudly on Sunday, at pains to claim they were “all there on merit”.
It’s difficult to swallow, especially when it comes to Keneally.
Her ascension to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s counterpart follows a long string of political failures, starting with leading NSW Labor to its worst-ever election defeat in 2011 as the then premier, having gained that gig with the support of powerbrokers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi, later found to be corrupt.
In Keneally’s defence, she did end up giving evidence against the men at ICAC.
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KK then enjoyed a stint as a TV presenter on my own network, Sky News, before being parachuted into the Bennelong by-election as Shorten’s pick for Labor candidate in 2017.
She promptly lost that, despite a massive spend by the party and unions.
Her consolation prize was to take the disgraced Sam Dastyari’s NSW Senate spot.
In the federal election campaign, she played a starring role as Shorten’s “bus captain” and chief headkicker, a move that appears to have backfired as Labor haemorrhaged votes around the country.
But despite all that, Keneally had not one but two men stand aside for her to claim her roles on the front bench and in the Senate.
The first was the talented Ed Husic, the Member for Chifley in Western Sydney and Australia’s first Muslim MP.
Next to go was Don Farrell, the South Australian factional boss who stepped down as deputy Senate leader so Keneally could take his place, despite him having the support of Labor’s Right faction.
All this so Albo could crow about having a female-friendly leadership team.
But it’s Keneally’s elevation to the key Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship portfolio that is truly bewildering, given Labor should be desperately trying to dispel the perception that it is soft on borders if it wants any shot at winning the next election.
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This is especially the case given its new leader is notorious for having voted against boat turnbacks at the ALP National Conference in 2015.
“If people were in a boat including families and children, I myself couldn’t turn that around,” Albanese said at the time.
But instead of installing someone hard-line on immigration to measure up to Dutton, Albanese has nonsensically chosen a people-smuggling apologist who has publicly railed against offshore detention.
In a 2017 piece in The Guardian, Keneally wrote: “There is a solution to Turnbull’s Nauru and Manus Island problem that doesn’t depend on the whims of an idiotic and unpredictable US President: bring the refugees to Australia.”
It’s worth noting that not-so-subtle attack on the leader of the free world there, the same man who is already none too happy with Australia over the refugee swap deal his predecessor Barack Obama struck with Malcolm Turnbull.
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In previous columns, Keneally expressed her support for a royal commission into offshore detention.
“It might not be for a decade or more, I said, and our children and grandchildren will wonder how we all let it happen,” she wrote.
This is the person who Labor would trust to stop the boats and ensure another 1200 desperate people don’t drown at sea?
Keneally has spent the past day trying to backtrack from her previous comments, but her appointment has given the government an unmissable free kick.
“There’s nobody less qualified in the Labor Party on border protection matters than Kristina Keneally and yet she’s ended up with the portfolio, it’s quite bizarre,” Dutton said yesterday.
Equally mystifying was Albanese’s decision to keep Shorten on the front bench.
I suppose there is some sense in keeping your friends close and your enemies in Cabinet, but if anyone honestly believes Shorten’s lifetime leadership ambitions have simply vanished into thin air, they’re kidding themselves.
With a position such as shadow National Disability Insurance Scheme minister — as important as that role is — Shorten will have the time and proximity to undermine from within.
All the while, Morrison is rubbing his hands with glee and settling in for the long haul.
Caroline Marcus is a senior reporter with Sky News.
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