Nothing better illustrates the merit of dumping Ed Husic than the self-indulgence of his performance on Sunday

The outburst from an axed minister who labelled the Deputy Prime Minister a factional assassin says everything you need to know about him.

I suppose if you live long enough you’ll see just about anything but even so, I never thought I’d have to sit through a senior member of the NSW Labor Right being listened to with a straight face as he whined on the ABC about “factional grubbiness”.

But there on Sunday morning was Ed Husic sooking up to David Speers after he was dumped last week from the ministry.

Not that Ed was sad for himself, mind you – it was the Labor supporters he felt for, who had gone from “the high of Saturday and a terrific and tremendous win, to the lows of factional grubbiness”.

This, he lamented, had been “a distraction at the start of what will be a successful second term.”

Ed Husic sooked up to David Speers after he was dumped from the ministry. Picture: Jane Dempster

It says everything you need to know about Husic that he felt the best way to help the government move past this distraction was to go on Insiders and whinge that the Prime Minister should have used his newly enhanced authority to save him and to call the Deputy Prime Minister a factional assassin.

There’s been a lot of discussion about merit in the selection of Labor’s ministry since we learned Husic and the soon-to-be-ex Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus were to be ejected from the front bench.

And if you ask me nothing better illustrates the merit of dumping him than the self-indulgence of Husic’s performance on Sunday.

There’s no need to get teary about Dreyfus’s exit either.

Soon-to-be-ex Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has been ejected from the front bench. Picture: Martin Ollman

By any measure 15 years on the front bench is a pretty good run for a bloke whose political compass is so off it earned him the ironic nickname ‘the North Star’ from some in the Labor Party.

If the old boy has a legitimate complaint it’s that if he’d seen this coming he probably would have retired.

But then if he’d seen this coming he wouldn’t have been Dreyfus.

Don’t be fooled by the urbane KC act either; Dreyfus can be extraordinarily petty and vindictive.

Nothing better illustrates this than the extreme lengths he was prepared to go to get rid of the Liberal appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal he objected to.

Dreyfus can be extraordinarily petty and vindictive. Picture: Martin Ollman

Now to be clear I am not defending the way the last government used the AAT as a glorified pension scheme for loyal retainers.

But the thing to understand is that these cases constituted a small percentage of the tribunal.

The majority of its members were nonpartisan, and considering its under-resourcing, did a good job of getting through an extraordinary amount of work.

A reasonable A-G would, upon coming to power, have quickly realised there was no way to justify the expense of sacking the entire AAT and replacing it with an identical body just to get rid of a few people.

He would also have realised that given its members had given up other jobs to take up fixed-term appointments at the AAT, they would have had a reasonable chance of successfully suing the Commonwealth to be paid out for the balance of the time left on their contracts.

Dreyfus didn’t care.

This Labor Attorney-General pressed on and got around the problem by including a clause denying them the right to sue in the legislation abolishing the AAT.

Despite that, however, the Opposition claims the budget papers show its successor body the ART will end up costing a billion dollars more than if the AAT had been left the way it was.

Oh, and despite the expense, the backlog of migration and refugee cases has gone through the roof since the ART started.

Incidentally you can draw your own conclusions about how arms-length appointments to the ART have been from the fact three of the names picked by the independent selection panel were mysteriously dropped – two which were Liberals and the third, barrister Amanda Mendes Da Costa, just happens to be married to Dreyfus’s great enemy, the former Labor MP Michael Danby.

So yeah, as I said, no need to get worked up on behalf of the KC MP’s dumping.

As for how his and Husic’s replacements – the Victorians Right MPs Sam Rae and Daniel Mulino – will go, it is of course impossible to say.

MP Daniel Mulino has been promoted to the front bench. Picture: Martin Ollman

On paper however, Mulino’s appointment is an unmitigated good thing.

Possessed of an economic PhD from Yale, he’s thoughtful and has waited patiently for Labor’s faction system to see to it that he reaches the front bench – first in the Victorian Parliament – and later in Canberra.

On merit he’d have been a minister years ago as most people in Labor would acknowledge.

Rae, on the other hand is, at 38, the one with the potential to go the furthest.

Indeed he’s the closest thing Victoria has to a potential Labor leader – certainly in the opinion of Sam Rae.

Sam Rae has to a potential Labor leader. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Which among things is why his meteoric rise to the ministry after only three years in parliament has put a lot of noses out of joint.

The real reason why he’s a potential leader is of course because of his factional juice, which like it or not, is a prerequisite for that job these days as the careers of Albo and Bill Shorten demonstrate.

Originally published as Nothing better illustrates the merit of dumping Ed Husic than the self-indulgence of his performance on Sunday