Ed Husic and Mark Dreyfus hang over Anthony Albanese’s PR coup of a cabinet swearing in
There’s something so quaint about a ministerial swearing in. Surprising middle names revealed, beautiful old family bibles held with pride.
It was a big day at Government House for promoted ministers like Anika Shay Wells and Anne Azza Aly.
Even ministers staying in their place, like Christopher Eyles Guy Bowen, and MPs who got shafted from big portfolios like Tanya Joan Plibersek, looked pleased to just be there.
And what a PR coup for Anthony Norman Albanese.
All those new young ministers and assistant ministers with their little kids running around Governor-General Sam Mostyn’s Canberra pad.
The message was clear. This is a revitalised government focused on families just like theirs.
But of course two people never made it to the swearing in – Edham Nurredin Husic and Mark Alfred Dreyfus.
And the machinations behind the pair’s axing from cabinet was still hanging over Anthony Albanese and his refreshed team on Tuesday morning.
The former industry minister – after a Sunday morning mauling of “factional assassin’ and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles – went on the ABC’s Q&A program late on Monday night to say his and Dreyfus’s treatment would repel people from the Labor Party.
Husic in particular stood up for Dreyfus who ran again at the age of 68, after a hard three years professionally and personally, only to find out his own faction was waiting to get him.
“I feel really bad for the way that he’s gone. I think a lot of other people feel that way,” Husic said on the ABC.
“If people had … actually taken the time to have a yarn with him and talk it through, maybe (it would have been) a different outcome.”
It was Jim Chalmers (whose middle name is Edward by the way) who had to spend the early hours before the swearing-in fending off questions about Husic’s media tour of vegenence.
“I can only assume it will be a difficult day for them (Husic and Dreyfus) seeing their colleagues sworn in,” the Treasurer told the ABC.
“Unfortunately this is what happens when we have too many good people for a limited number of spots.
“I can understand why they’d be unhappy … Ed’s got a right to express a view.”
Well, Husic is out there expressing his view for sure.
“I just don’t think at the start of what was a great win, I just don’t think we should have had the distraction,” he told the ABC.
Even with all the kids and the pageantry and the power of a Labor mega majority, a few ministers with interesting middle names may have agreed with Husic on the distraction point.
More Coverage
Latham won’t deny having sex in Parliament House
The former Labor leader also said he was ‘unaware of any intimate videos Natalie Matthews filmed involving me’ in NSW Parliament House, and said he had breached no laws or legislative standing orders.
Rockliff claims victory for Libs but messy power struggle looms
Premier Jeremy Rockliff will seek to form a minority government, but Labor leader Dean Winter has refused to concede — and may seek an alliance with the Greens — despite his party’s worst poll result in more than 100 years.