Cabinet reshuffle: Peter Dutton and revitalised Marise Payne have work to do

Marise Payne speaks at a press conference at Parliament House, Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

If the Morrison government is to recover and lead Australia through an exceptionally difficult time, Peter Dutton in Defence and Marise Payne, in both Foreign Affairs and as Minister for Women, will both have to perform at a level neither has ever done before.

Payne was like someone suddenly released from witness protection as she stood next to Scott Morrison. Where had this fluent, self-confident MP been hiding?

But it is Dutton replacing Linda Reynolds in Defence which is most important. Dutton is a successful, first-division politician. He confronts a quiet crisis in Defence. Here is one sign: the ­Nationals’ federal conference at the weekend defeated a motion calling on the Morrison government to terminate the contract for the 12 new French submarines by the slenderest of margins — 54 votes to 50. Nothing could ­better illustrate Reynolds’ overwhelming failure.

Even the Nats, traditionally more conservative and strong on national security than any other part of mainstream politics, came within a whisker of condemning outright the government’s main defence capability program.

This indicates a profound malaise in Defence. If the government cannot convince its own party activists of its core program, it has failed dismally. It would be like a Labor Party conference rejecting an expansion of Medicare. You almost couldn’t believe it. It indicates epic failure.

Dutton has to turn around the catastrophic loss of legitimacy and approval for key defence capabilities. He also needs to radically accelerate the acquisition of greater strategic weight and strike capacity. And he has to ­provide a coherent strategic ­narrative. His task is even more challenging because — given the failures of his predecessors — he has to do all this at full speed, from a standing start, and in the most complex and difficult portfolio in ­government. He’s probably the best man for the job, but he has a huge task ahead of him.

So does Payne. It genuinely pains me to say it but Reynolds gave the impression she couldn’t really function very well beyond her talking points. Payne certainly can — but, astonishingly, bizarrely, has up to this point ­chosen not to.

Standing next to the Prime Minister, charting a new course for women’s issues in government, was a new Marise Payne.

In the past, she too has tended to stick mechanically to her talking points — or, even worse, to the specific sentences formulated to express those talking points. It has been robotic and intensely unconvincing.

This is so weird because when she opens up in the normal political to and fro, she is perfectly good at it. Between Payne and Reynolds, the foreign and defence ­ministers did about 10 per cent of the media that their combined portfolios should do. This has nothing to do with media egos. It’s all about providing leadership and taking the community with the government.

The combined failure of Payne and Reynolds was even worse for the Morrison government than that. My colleague Paul Kelly has pointed out the Liberal Party has dismally failed to develop a national women’s brand. And this is, astonishingly, despite Morrison appointing women to the two key national security posts in cabinet. Neither of them remotely rose to the leadership challenge.

Payne’s bizarre silence over the past six weeks, when far more junior Liberal women have had to carry the defence of their side of politics, is a sign of how hopeless this situation was. With Dutton in Defence, and Payne at last surely accepting the public dimension of her job, the government should be much better. Still, I wouldn’t bet the house just yet.