Prime Minister John Howard has called his new ministry “”a new line-up for the new millennium”. Not so. He has chosen state balance over political balance. He has missed an opportunity to bring some moderates into the ministry. The message to his backbench is: brains, talent, education and the holding of moderate views are a bar to ministerial promotion and of more import is the state you come from, services rendered, usefulness to the Government’s re-election and political views to the right.
And his allocation of Cabinet spots and portfolios have the same drawback, with one exception. The exception is the appointment of Amanda Vanstone into Cabinet. That was a good appointment. She has performed well and has been an occasional voice of moderation in a Cabinet and Ministry which is looking uniformly right-wing. However, it seems Mr Howard appointed her out of necessity. He had to have a woman in Cabinet.
With Senator John Herron retiring, the portfolio of Aboriginal Affairs became vacant. Mr Howard could not have made a worse choice with Philip Ruddock, who adds the portfolio to Immigration. It is almost as if Mr Ruddock becomes Minister for Non-White Australians. He has had a history of refugee-bashing. He will not inspire confidence in the Aboriginal community. Rather he will inspire a fear that he will take a similar hardline in Aboriginal Affairs as he has in Immigration. These two portfolios each require the attention of a single minister. That they have been shoved together indicates that Mr Howard regards these important social portfolios with less importance than they deserve.
Tony Abbott’s elevation to Cabinet comes after a year of head-kicking toughness and out-spoken brow beating of all who disagree with the Government’s hardline against welfare recipients of any kind. In Workplace Relations he is likely to be even more confrontational than Peter Reith, who moves to defence, but Mr Abbott might find his protagonists in Workplace Relations more difficult to bully. Mr Reith keeps a senior role, but a less controversial one, in the wake of the Telecard affair.
The Telecard affair might have had some bearing on the move sideways of Chris Ellison to Justice and Customs from the Special Ministry of State which was the hot seat that dealt with MPs perks.
Mr Howard could have done better than the three MPs he selected for promotion to the ministry. Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz who gets Special Minister of State, is a long-serving senator in a state which has no Coalition members in the lower house. The Government is looking after Tasmania. Mal Brough, who gets Employment Services, holds his Queensland seat of Longman by less than 1 per cent. Another Queenslander, Ian Macfarlane, comes in as Minister for Small Business. So Queensland has done well. Mr Macfarlane, it will be remembered was the MP who said farmers risked becoming seen as “”ungrateful whingers”. As a former National Farmers Federation councillor he was seen as highlighting the benefits the Government had given farmers since its election in 1996, despite the petrol price rise.
It is more instructive to see who was left out of the ministry. Petro Georgiou, who has had the temerity to speak out about multi-culturalism and refugees in a way not compatible with the Howard-Ruddock hardline, Bruce Baird, who was an effective minister in NSW with great experience in sport and tourism, Western Australia’s Julie Bishop, and former Australian Medical Association leader Brendan Nelson all would have made who have made a better additions than those Mr Howard selected. They would have added a diversity of views, talent, vision and experience to the ministry.
The new ministry for the new millennium. It is just more of the same monoculture.