The Albanese government was right to drop Ed Husic from cabinet, as Husic’s extraordinary interview on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday confirms, but it has made a terrible mistake getting rid of the last King’s Counsel, Mark Dreyfus, as attorney-general. Husic, as a politician who benefited prodigiously from the Labor faction system, is open to charges of hypocrisy in whingeing about the system when he loses.
But that’s just par for the course. What was extraordinary was Husic’s complaint that his outspokenness on Gaza while in cabinet was, in his view, a factor in his demotion.
You shouldn’t appoint minorities in politics, Husic argued, and then expect them to sit quiet in a corner. Presumably Husic, in claiming minority status for himself, was referencing his being a Muslim. There were times when Husic as a cabinet member went far beyond government policy on Gaza, as for example calling for sanctions against Israel. That was controversial at the time. There was reportedly serious tension between Husic and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Yet the implications of Husic’s defence of his own lack of discipline are shocking, if not frankly sinister.
In the Westminster system, cabinet ministers are bound by cabinet discipline. Cabinet ministers have the privilege of arguing, even voting, on government policy within cabinet, but once a policy is decided they have to abide by it publicly, though they can always argue within cabinet for it to be changed.
Thus, when Wong was a cabinet minister in Julia Gillard’s government, and the Gillard government at the time had a policy of opposing the legalisation of same-sex marriages, Wong had to abide by cabinet discipline, no matter how passionately she felt about the issue. The only other option would have been to resign from cabinet.
The implication in Husic’s bizarre argument is apparently that cabinet solidarity is OK for everyone else but should not apply to Muslims. This is an appalling position in principle and also deeply damaging to Australian Muslims because it implies that they should be held to a lower standard of political conduct than non-Muslims.
Similarly, Husic’s position also seems to imply that his views on Gaza were heavily influenced by his being Muslim.
I would never make those suggestions about any politician, linking any view they might hold to their religious or ethnic background. Husic, in his flailing tantrum, is himself bringing that slur against Australian Muslim politicians.
Husic’s defenders are also wildly over-estimating his very mixed, and at times eccentric, record as a minister. One of the most significant decisions he took was to cancel the previous government’s $1.2bn plan for Australia to build its own low Earth orbit satellites. We are one of the few countries of our size and wealth not to have our own satellites. The government cancelled similar military satellites. This is an essential piece of modern hi-tech architecture, with obvious military application, where the Albanese government just went missing. Having your own satellites is a kind of entry-level first step in a space industry, modern technology and national security.
Former attorney-general Dreyfus, as far as I know, never breached cabinet discipline. His loss from cabinet is a minor national tragedy, not because he’s a super genius or anything but because he is the most substantial lawyer and the last King’s Counsel in parliament. It is immensely beneficial to a government, and to a parliament, to have one, and preferably more than one, serious legal mind in its ranks.
There are a million reasons for this. One is so that governments, not just the public service, can consider deeply the interaction of laws and policies. Senior KCs, and before that QCs, have frequently in our history stood up within government deliberations, and within cabinet itself, for basic common law rights that may be unintentionally, or indeed intentionally, infringed by specific legislation.
The law, academically, is one of the few intellectual disciplines left, in the emaciated tradition of the humanities in the West, that self-consciously, routinely and rigorously goes back to first principles to throw light on contemporary issues. It’s one of the few disciplines that consciously seeks the wisdom of the past in its deliberations.
The modern parliament is full of law degrees but almost completely empty of serious lawyers. A modern law degree is like an arts degree 50 years ago, it’s just a standard, generalist university ticket. A KC normally gets that title after long practice at the bar. They can be relied on to have seriously internalised the deepest principles, and much of the operational consequence, of the law.
Of course the academic study of the law has taken its own odd twists in recent years. But that again emphasises the value of an experienced KC who has operated in the real world.
Australian political history is full of KCs, formerly QCs, who have played central roles – Robert Menzies, Garfield Barwick, Percy Spender, HV Evatt, Gareth Evans, Daryl Williams, George Brandis and Dreyfus himself. Once, the very best KCs were keen to serve in parliament and national leadership as part of their civic contribution. Our culture has made that much less the case now.
Menzies apart, they seldom led governments. There’s something about being a KC that makes communication with ordinary people a bit difficult. Typically wordy, pedantic and a little pompous, almost none of the KCs (formerly QCs) could write a useable newspaper opinion piece. Indeed, Evans, brainy as he is, used to make Kevin Rudd look like Ernest Hemingway.
But none of that matters. It’s their deep legal expertise, their deep attachment to the principles of the common law, the sense in the whole community that they are people of accomplishment and substance, that made KCs so valuable to parliament and to government. Labor should have kept the last of the species in service.
Nothing could better illustrate the collapse of the standing of politics as a profession than that KCs now have not the slightest interest in joining its ranks.
We’re doing a lot to make politics less attractive to the best people. Liberal Keith Wolahan took a year off work to campaign for Menzies in 2022. He won narrowly, was a superb local member who made a national contribution, but suffered a heavy redistribution. He would have won on the old boundaries but lost narrowly on the new boundaries. You can’t really run for politics now without making a big personal financial commitment. That’s somewhat undemocratic.
Husic argued minority status should trump cabinet discipline. Dreyfus argued legislation should protect human rights and legal principles.
Getting the best into parliament is increasingly difficult.
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