The elevation of Indigenous senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Kerrynne Liddle into Peter Dutton’s shadow ministry is a massive boost for the Opposition Leader’s campaign against Anthony Albanese’s voice model.
Julian Leeser’s resignation as opposition Indigenous Australians and legal affairs spokesman allows Dutton to pit Price against Linda Burney and former attorney-general Michaelia Cash against Mark Dreyfus.
It never made sense for Leeser to hold both portfolios and the combination of Price and Cash means the Coalition can spread its resources across key political battlegrounds.
As child protection spokeswoman, Liddle will prosecute the Coalition’s focus on systemic failures to address child sexual abuse and family violence in Indigenous communities.
Price and Liddle, from the Northern Territory and South Australia, are exactly what the Coalition needs. They are intelligent, forthright and speak from lived experience.
New opposition home affairs and cyber security spokesman James Paterson – a China hawk and close ally of Dutton – injects new blood into shadow cabinet.
The 35-year-old former chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security joins fellow young gun Andrew Hastie in leading the Coalition’s national security and defence policy agenda.
The departure of Karen Andrews, who turns 63 in August, is not a surprise. The Gold Coast MP, who will quit politics at the next election, had coveted a prominent frontbench role and leadership position, which did not materialise under Dutton.
Despite making up about a quarter of the Coalition partyroom, the Nationals claimed a seventh shadow cabinet position. The promotion of Price, a No campaign leader who sits in the Nationals partyroom as a Country Liberal Party member, was backed by a majority of Liberal MPs.
After the demoralising Aston by-election defeat and Labor’s dominance in the polls, Dutton faces the difficult task of unifying his shadow ministry and backbench. Generational renewal in politics after almost a decade in power is tough. Realistically, Dutton faces other prominent former ministers quitting politics ahead of the next election.
An expected by-election in Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook and the referendum to constitutionally enshrine a voice to parliament and executive government, held in October or November, loom as make or break for Dutton’s leadership.
Confronting the spectre of an early federal election late next year, Dutton will use his May 11 budget in-reply speech to begin rolling out the Coalition’s policy agenda. He has no alternative but to turbocharge an alternative Coalition policy manifesto.
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