‘Dumb, nasty’: Uproar after Labor bloodbath, MPs unload on Albanese, Marles
Anthony Albanese and his deputy Richard Marles have come under fire following the “nasty” treatment of two cabinet ministers.
As white smoke rose from a chimney in the Sistine Chapel to announce a new Pope on Thursday, the ALP’s factions were still digesting the news from their own factional conclaves.
But rather than elect a new leader, they have been busy killing their own.
With the Prime Minister’s Left faction in ascendancy numerically, the Right faction had to give up some ministries in the factional carve up.
Historically the dominant faction in the Labor Party, the Right delivered Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd and even Gough Whitlam.
The Left is now in the ascendancy – think Julia Gillard and Anthony Albanese.
In theory, that’s the way it works in the Labor Party.
The ALP’s factions choose the names for the front bench and the Prime Minister chooses the portfolios.
This time, the political victims are Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, the only Jewish MP in cabinet, and the Industry Minister Ed Husic, the only Muslim currently in cabinet.
They’re out. Their ministerial careers are now over to make way for fresh talent.
Sometimes that happens. But it is the way it happened that has left many MPs angry and repulsed, describing it as “disgusting, dumb, mean and nasty.”
Dumb because it tarnishes a historic victory and nasty because it corrodes the trust within cabinet, the Labor caucus and the leadership group.
How it unfolded
On Wednesday night, the Prime Minister sat in the ABC studios and was asked by 7:30 host Sarah Ferguson, “Does the authority given to you by the size of this victory, mean that the normal rules for handing out ministries to the factions no longer apply.”
“Well, the leader always gets to allocate portfolios under our system, but I’m someone who’s consultative,’’ Mr Albanese said.
Just an hour later, his deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles was on the phone to his Victorian colleague Mark Dreyfus at 8:30pm.
He made it clear that he wouldn’t lift a finger as the head of the Victorian Right to save Labor’s only Jewish MP in cabinet from being dumped from the ministry.
Mark Dreyfus was effectively told he was political dead meat.
The suggestion that Mr Marles would tell Mr Dreyfus his ministerial career was over without some conversation with the Prime Minister as to the realpolitik at play is laughable.
On Thursday morning, grief-stricken and in a fury when he realised he was being abandoned by his own faction, news.com.au understands that Mark Dreyfus contacted the Prime Minister.
With unfettered power after his election victory, Mr Albanese could have intervened to provide a more dignified exit for Mr Dreyfus.
He did none of these things. Whatever was said in that discussion, Mr Albanese didn’t help him.
It’s hard not to wonder if the ministers are gone because the Prime Minister wanted them gone and the deputy Prime Minister was not only elevating his own factional allies but following the PM’s orders.
Keep in mind when Mark Dreyfus’ wife Deborah died from cancer in November, 2023, the Prime Minister begged him to stay and run again. Brutal doesn’t cover it.
The Prime Minister, the Labor factions and ‘respect’
By the time the Prime Minister spoke to Sky News on Thursday he issued a veiled warning to his MPs including Mark Dreyfus and Ed Husic.
“Government brings with it responsibility, and no individual is greater than the collective, and that includes myself,’’ he said.
“And we need to approach this term with humility, to make sure that we deliver on the commitments that we made to the Australian people, but also that we operate in a way which shows solidarity.”
The message sent was keep your mouths shut and think of the Labor Party.
When Anthony Albanese addressed his 90-strong caucus after a historic victory on Friday morning, the day after he spoke to the dumped Mr Dreyfus, he refused to even look him in the eye.
He did not acknowledge or thank the two ministers dumped by the factions – the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and Industry Minister Ed Husic – that served in his cabinet for three years.
This is no small thing. For a Prime Minister who spent the entire week talking about respect and kindness it was a bizarre performance and it shocked veteran MPs.
Mark Dreyfus was escorted to and from the caucus room by Victorian MP Julian Hill, who isn’t even in his faction.
The conduct of Mr Dreyfus’ own faction in not supporting him at this moment even on a personal level was cowardly.
It suggests that he will likely leave parliament before the end of the term triggering a by-election in Isaacs.
Paul Keating blasts Albo
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who governed when the NSW Right actually had power, was incandescent.
“As the cabinet’s sole Muslim member, Husic’s expulsion from the ministry proffers contempt for the measured and centrist support provided by the broader Muslim community to the Labor Party at the general election,” Mr Keating said in a statement.
“And for what? To keep up some notional proportional count between factions and elements of the Right of the party between states, in this case between representatives of New South Wales and Victoria.”
The Victorian Right he added was “a faction demonstrably devoid of creativity and capacity.”
Who leads that faction? In theory it is the deputy prime minister Richard Marles but in practice it is also his protege Sam Rae.
Who is ‘smash and grab’ artist Sam Rae?
The former Victorian state secretary Sam Rae was chosen for promotion by his own faction, most likely for a relatively junior portfolio.
At face value, he is a person who would appear to have done little to justify such an ascendancy beyond being Richard Marles’ headkicker with big hair.
Intelligent enough, he doesn’t seem to have done much in the first term other than play soccer and not take up the various opportunities he was offered.
MPs say that the message it sends is corrosive. The message is that hard work doesn’t matter.
So why does he matter? Sam Rae matters because he runs the Victorian Right. Some go as far as to suggest Richard Marles doesn’t care about factional shenanigans.
They claim that Sam Rae has been running the Victorian right for a long time. Others disagree, insisting Richard Marles is very much in charge.
That means Labor ministers Clare O’Neil, Mark Dreyfus, and MPs Peter Khalil, Josh Burns, Tim Watts, Cassandra Fernando, Alice Jordan-Baird, Joanne Ryan, Daniel Mulino, Rob Mitchell, Senators Raff Ciccone and Jana Stewart, owe their seats or take their orders from them.
When the secret ballot was conducted for the ministry spots this week, it is said they voted 14:1 to exclude Mr Dreyfus who forced it to a vote.
But as a factional benefactor, some might argue Richard Marles hasn’t even looked after his protege. He’s just put a giant target on Sam Rae’s back.
This sort of conduct might pass as normal in Dan Andrews’ Victorian Labor Party but it is not the way things are done at the federal level.
Others suggest this is simply Sam Rae’s modus operandi. He’s a smash and grab artist. It’s situation normal.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and ex-Labor MP Stephen Conroy
As one Labor staffer observed, Labor people sometimes talk about the Richard Marles faction.
“And I always think, what is the Richard Marles faction? When Richard Marles talks it’s just a puppet talking with Stephen Conroy’s hand up his arse.”
That’s a rather colourful way of saying that even though former Labor minister Stephen Conroy left parliament in 2016, he casts a long shadow.
Don’t forget the entire federal intervention in the Victorian branch after 60 minutes exposed explosive allegations of misconduct against Victorian Labor MP Adem Somyurek was also a big factional play, triggering intervention.
There wasn’t much left of the Victorian Right after that but was left standing was controlled by Richard Marles and Sam Rae.
As state secretary, Mr Rae led the party to a landslide victory in the 2018 state election. He was also state secretary while Mr Somyurek began reasserting his factional influence in the Victorian division of the ALP before he quit the party office job in 2019 became a partner at PwC.
So why was the Attorney-General dumped?
The biggest criticism of Mark Dreyfus is probably that he wasn’t political enough.
He was a reformist Attorney-General who did important things in family law to protect women and children, banned the Nazi salute and introduced hate crime laws, negotiated with the United States to free Julian Assange and established the National Anti-Corruption Commission, although the jury is out on how effective that is.
Internally, there’s a hint he did not agree with some of the governments moves around mandatory sentencing for former asylum seekers
In February, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese overruled his own Attorney-General when he capitulated to the opposition and legislated mandatory minimum prison sentences for antisemitic and terror offences.
But Mr Dreyfus never spoke against the cabinet. Isn’t that the point, to have someone in there arguing the contrarian position?
Mr Dreyfus entered parliament in 2007, the same election that Mr Marles joined parliament.
If there’s an argument for renewal, some MPs suggest the deputy Prime Minister may wish to look in the mirror.
Why was Ed Husic dumped?
Not so long ago, Mr Albanese paraded Sydney MP Ed Husic around Indonesia to highlight the fact he had a Muslim frontbencher. It’s fair to say he won’t be going to Jakarta when the Prime Minister flies there shortly.
So why was he dumped? Once again, Mr Husic’s crimes include challenging the Prime Minister.
He did so on Gaza and on corporate tax cuts. The government has been keen to point out that WA’s Anne Aly, a Muslim and a woman, will be joining cabinet.
Ed Husic didn’t bother to turn up to the Labor caucus this week – underlining some of the reasons why he was dumped he is regarded in some quarters as something of a show pony.
There’s a good deal more sympathy for the promotion and elevation of Victorian MP Daniel Mulino, who is expected to be appointed as the Assistant Treasurer.
He has an economics PhD from Yale university and was the chairman of the committee charged with overseeing the country’s top financial regulators.
Why did Richard Marles’ do it?
If Richard Marles’ purpose was to flex his muscle with a view to becoming leader one day, it is achieved the very opposite.
That will now happen over many MPs’ dead bodies.
“He shot two cabinet ministers today and carried out their bodies,’’ a Labor MP observed.
“Who was the last person to do that?”
NSW Labor MP Dr Mike Freelander described the entire situation – publicly – as “pathetic”.
“I just said there was an ill wind blowing through this parliament, and the effect of which we won’t know for some time, but I thought that we should be ashamed of ourselves for what we’ve done,’’ Dr Freelander said.
The election night was a big night for the Marles family.
Son Sam Marles, a professional MMA fighter, took on an undefeated Nate Law at the UFC’s Eternal 95 event in Logan City and won.
That prompted the Project to ask him what his father, who they described as politics ‘Mr Nice Guy’ made of it all.
The truth is Mr Marles knows a few things about cage fighting too.
The Prime Minister shows his ruthless side
The Prime Minister has the new Pope Leo XIV to thank and the bloody civil war in the Liberal Party for the fact his factional killing squad was not front-page news.
The irony of Anthony Albanese being framed as weak when he is in fact a ruthless man who never forgets behind closed doors is writ large.
Witness the treatment of Tanya Plibersek. Nobody can understand it, when she’s an effective minister. But she’s very much on the outer.
There was Bill Shorten, who was never treated with the respect he deserved as a former leader.
What’s dangerous for Richard Marles is that he is now seen as having form.
From his bloody entrance to parliament in 2007 when sitting MPs were politically decapitated, to the departure of his chief of staff Jo Tarnawsky who settled a legal case after suggesting he didn’t support her, to his treatment of the late Kimberley Kitching who asked for help with an internal squabble and got none and now his treatment of Labor’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, the list goes on.
It was around 350BC when Aristotle wrote that a play must always have a beginning, a middle, and an end and that plot is the soul of tragedy.
In the beginning of a play, a character makes a decision and performs an action. The action has consequences, until that initial action results in a climax, a kind of catharsis.
The consequences of this week are set to reverberate for a long time in Mr Marles’ career. In some respects it will define him.
His ongoing attempts to play dress ups as some sort of political Teddy bear on breakfast television when his real instincts and motivations are darker and more ambitious, are over.
Like all good Shakespearean tragedies, it hints that he will leave politics at a date to be determined, in the manner in which he arrived.
Read related topics:Anthony Albanese
Putin, Xi’s bold message to rest of the world
Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping have delivered a bold message to the rest of the world during a powerful joint military display.
Read more
Dutton’s six-figure post-politics pension
Unseated and ousted as opposition leader, Peter Dutton’s time in parliament is over. But taxpayers are set to keep paying him in retirement.
Read more
Big bank reveals record $11bn revenue haul
One of Australia’s biggest banks has delivered record revenues as its outgoing CEO praises ‘remarkably resilient’ Aussie households.
Read more