Albanese eyes up cabinet picks after Australian election victory
election landslide
is the victorious party has many more people angling for cabinet ministries.
Inevitably, some are going to be disappointed, feelings will be hurt and careers will be cut short.
But if winning up to 93 of the
Australian
parliament's 150 lower house seats is a problem for Labor prime minister
Anthony Albanese
, it's not as bad as the headache facing the opposition: the Liberal-National coalition, a conservative alliance reduced to its worst result of about 44 seats (some are still too close to call).
Making a bad situation worse, the Liberal side of the coalition is leaderless, with Peter Dutton having lost his Brisbane seat to Labor. Labor also won Greens leader Adam Bandt's seat.
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Though Albanese has more power than any previous Labor prime minister, he is answerable to the left and right factions of the party, which in turn are tied to support from affiliated unions.
The left, from which Albanese comes, gained more seats and is looking for an extra cabinet position. The right, led by deputy prime minister Richard Marles, has already shown how ruthless it can be by telling attorney-general Mark Dreyfus and industry minister Ed Husic that their time in cabinet is over.
The major difficulty with that is Dreyfus, who is Jewish, is the most pro-Israel Labor MP, and Husic, whose parents migrated from Bosnia, is the only Muslim in cabinet. Dropping both at the same time risks looking like an oblique comment on the Middle East.
Albanese could have made a 'captain's pick' to retain one or both, but chose not to. He has also not commented on whether environment minister Tanya Plibersek will retain her portfolio. Though they are both from the left of the party and represent neighbouring Sydney electorates, Albanese and Plibersek are not close and she is seen as a future Labor leader.
But when the new cabinet is sworn in next week, Plibersek will still be included as Albanese will calculate that she is better kept close at hand than stewing on the backbenches. But she is unlikely to remain as environment minister, as Albanese has previously watered down some of her proposals.
The Liberals will meet to pick a new leader on Tuesday. With
Dublin-born Keith Wolohan
, who was tipped as a future leader, having lost his Melbourne seat and other front runners having dropped out, this is a two-horse race between deputy party leader Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.
In the expectation that Taylor would be a bigger threat, Labor treasurer Jim Chalmers criticised him while votes were being counted on election night last Saturday, questioning his grasp of economics.
Even more damning for Taylor is that one of his own, Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, did the same thing.
'I have concerns about his capability. I feel we have zero economic policy to sell,' she told ABC radio. 'I don't know what he's been doing for three years. There was no tax policy, there was no economic narrative.'
Labor will hope Ley is chosen as she would be an easier target, given her unorthodox beliefs and an expenses scandal.
Ley, who changed her name from Susan to Sussan, explained in 2015: 'I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality. I worked out that if you added an s I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring. It's that simple.'
Her life got a touch too exciting when she had to resign as health minister in 2017 after using a taxpayer-funded trip to buy an apartment on Queensland's Gold Coast. While Labor questions Taylor's grasp of numbers, Ley's grasp of numerology and expenses will be easy to attack.
Meanwhile, the opposition coalition's supporters in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers and Sky News are reeling at the biggest conservative loss they've seen.
Andrew Bolt, who is a Sky News presenter and News Corp columnist, published a piece last Saturday telling Australians they had made a mistake. 'No, the voters aren't always right. This time they were wrong,' he wrote.
Bolt said the coalition lost because it 'refused to fight the 'culture wars''. This was a reference to issues such as identity politics, Aboriginal policy and immigration. His Sky colleague Peta Credlin, a former chief of staff to ex-Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, later backed Bolt, saying 'I'd argue we didn't do enough of a culture war'.
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12 hours ago
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Heather Humphreys takes large lead over Seán Kelly in race to seek Fine Gael presidential election nomination
Former Fine Gael minister Heather Humphreys has taken a large lead over Ireland South MEP Seán Kelly in the battle to seek the party's nomination to contest the upcoming presidential election . Both Ms Humphreys and Mr Kelly announced their intention to run for president for Fine Gael on Tuesday morning. Each will require the backing of 20 members of the parliamentary party, as well as 25 councillors and five members of the executive council. By Tuesday afternoon, Ms Humphreys had at least 29 nominations from TDs and senators, and was widely expected to have over 30 by the end of the day. So far, Mr Kelly has the backing of at least six parliamentary party members. 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Irish Times
18 hours ago
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Heather Humphreys and Seán Kelly to seek Fine Gael nomination to run in presidential election
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2 days ago
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Lip-Bu Tan, Intel CEO with Silicon Valley's toughest turnaround job
At the top of the to-do list for many American business leaders is a simple priority: placate Donald Trump. Anyone doubting the need to keep the CEO-in-Chief happy has just been served a stark reminder by Lip-Bu Tan, boss of chipmaker Intel. A week ago, Tan had the dubious distinction of being the most prominent American business executive whose head Trump has demanded on a plate. The presidential call for his resignation appeared to stem not from Intel's struggles and recent threat to abandon cutting-edge chip manufacturing, but from Tan's former existence as a prolific start-up investor in Chinese semiconductor companies. A hastily arranged meeting at the White House on Monday turned the tide. Trump declared Tan's rise 'an amazing story' and hinted mysteriously at 'proposals' from the company that would soon follow. Days later, it emerged that the US has discussed taking a stake in Intel in return for investing in one of its manufacturing plants. 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Through Walden International, a US venture capital firm he started more than 40 years ago with just $3 million put up by family friends, Tan has played a significant role as a start-up investor in China's tech industry – investing in China's state-backed chip manufacturers SMIC and Biren Technology, as well as Sina, creator of Weibo, China's answer to X. Those deals made him a natural target for Washington's China hawks. US senator Tom Cotton wrote to Intel's chair last week asking if Tan had a 'conflict of interest'. Tan, who dismissed the queries as 'misinformation', appeared to lack the political antenna to recognise the seriousness of the threat. 'It's taken too long for him to get to Washington. He should have got there sooner,' says Daniel Newman, an analyst at The Futurum Group. That marks Tan out from his predecessor. Pat Gelsinger, who was pushed out late last year after losing the confidence of his company's board nearly four years into an attempted turnaround, worked Washington hard and positioned Intel as a national champion. On Gelsinger's watch (and with Tan on the board until last year) Intel made some headway. But it failed to meet his habitually upbeat predictions and was caught out by the surge in demand for Nvidia's AI chips. 'Intel are losing share in almost every category they're in,' says Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies. Tan (65) is willing to challenge orthodoxy inside one of Silicon Valley's most hidebound cultures, bringing an investor's eye to an engineer-led company. His arrival has been welcomed both in the chip industry and on Wall Street (Intel's stock has risen by more than a fifth since his appointment), though he has taken on a position few envy. 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