Anthony Albanese cabinet reshuffle: Prime Minister to announce new cabinet and ministry

Retiring skills minister Brendan O’Connor told ABC political panel program Insiders on Sunday morning that immigration minister Andrew Giles ‘may’ be moved from his portfolio.

The comment follows wide speculation that Mr Giles will be shafted from the immigration portfolio due to incompetence.

Mr Giles has received intense criticism over the High Court’s NZYQ ruling late-last year led to convicted criminal asylum seekers being released from indefinite detention because no other country will take them.

On Sunday, Insiders host David Speers asked Mr O’Connor about the reshuffle.

Mr Speers said: ‘I think Labor went through about four ministers during its time in Government in the immigration portfolio. It’s not easy. Would you be surprised to see Andrew Giles moved?’

Mr O’Connor (pictured below) replied: ‘I think that may well happen.’

He said the immigration portfolio was ‘challenging’ because issues that arise are sometimes out of the minister’s control.

The High Court’s decision was outside the government’s control.

Senator Malarndirri McCarthy will become the new Indigenous Australians Minister, according to Sky News.

It is strongly believed that Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil could be moved from their ministerial roles into new portfolios.

But major portfolios could remain in the same hands.

Defence will likely stay with Richard Marles, Treasurer will stay with Jim Chalmers and the Energy portfolio will likely stay with Chris Bowen.

There is also growing speculation the Home Affairs department could be reorganised.

Mr Marles told Sky on Sunday that he would not rule out a potential refit of the department.

‘All will be revealed, I’m not going to preempt any of that,’ he said.

‘There is a opportunity to refresh the front bench, the Prime Minister is taking that opportunity.’

‘This comes after a remarkably stable ministry in the first term of the Albanese government.’

NSW senator Jenny McAllister is tipped to be promoted to the outer ministry while Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy or Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh could be promoted to the Cabinet.

Mr Albanese will announce the reshuffle on Sunday afternoon.

The Coalition has surged ahead of Labor in the polls as more Aussies abandon Anthony Albanese amid the cost-of-living crisis.

The LNP is leading 51.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent on a two-party preferred basis in the latest RedBridge poll.

It marks the first time the Opposition has pulled ahead of Labor in this particular poll since Mr Albanese was elected prime minister in 2022.

Only months ago in April, Labor was leading by a comfortable 4 per cent.

The change in sentiment comes as more Australians become increasingly disappointed by Mr Albanese’s cost-of-living policies.

Adding to Peter Dutton’s support is male voters who are abandoning minor parties such as the Greens.

Since April, the surge in support for the Coalition’s primary vote went from 37 per cent to 41 per cent.

Liberal Senator James Patterson says current agricultural minister Murray Watt would be an ‘even worse’ home affairs minister than incumbent Clare O’Neil.

Senator Patterson’s comments come just hours before Anthony Albanese announces a cabinet reshuffle, scheduled for on Sunday afternoon.

The reshuffle comes after two ministers announced their resignation last week, including Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney and skills minister Brendan O’Connor.

There has also been intense speculation that Ms O’Neil could lose her home affairs portfolio, with Senator Watt has been tipped as her successor.

On Sunday moring, Senator Patterson told Sky News: ‘[Senator Watt] is a person who for many years railed against not just boat turned backs but offshore processing.’

‘In 2015, at the Labor Party’s national conference, [Senator Watt] moved a motion with Andrew Giles, to say that the Labor Party should oppose those policies.

‘Now those policies were two of the three key pillars of the successful Operation Sovereign Borders.’

He said Senator Watt would amount to a vote of no confidence in the government’s ability to stop people smugglers from operating in Australia.

‘It’s a signal to the people smugglers that they should again test the resolve of the Australian government as they had been doing over the last two years,” he said.

‘We are now up to 19 boats that have attempted to make the journey to Australia in the last two years, at least three of which have made it all the way to the Australian territory or mainland, drop people off and returned again, and that is unheard of over the last few decades of Australian border protection policy.’

Meanwhile, outgoing skills minister Brendan O’Connor backed Senator Watts while speaking on Insiders on Sunday.

‘I think people mention Murray Watt, I think he’s done a great job in agriculture and he and I worked very closely on the skills area,’ he told the ABC.

Shadow home affairs minister James Paterson has slammed Anthony Albanese for initially appointing Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles into the home affairs and immigration portfolios.

He told Sky News they were ‘two crazy decisions’.

‘After the election he appointed Clare O’Neil, who had demonstrated no interest or expertise in national security to her first portfolio in cabinet as the home affairs minister without any experience,’ he said.

‘Andrew Giles, someone who has spent his public life fighting against strong border protection policies to protect the community as the immigration minister.’

‘It will be an admission of failure and an admission of fault by the prime minister if they are moved today, but I think a lot of Australians will be hoping for that given the chaos we’ve seen over the past two years.’

The factional bosses sit down and determine who from within their faction gets to enter the Labor ministry.

There are 30 ministerial positions all up, most in Cabinet, some in the outer ministry. The Right faction is allocated roughly half the positions, the Left faction gets the rest.

The PM will be handed a piece of paper with exactly who will be part of his ministry by each faction.

After that, he is given some power: he chooses the portfolios for everyone other than the deputy PM, Richard Marles, who as deputy has the right to choose his portfolio.

Because the two retiring ministers, Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor, are from the Left, that faction will pick two new entrants to the ministry to replace them

The word is that one will be the assistant minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy.

The other is a choice between three other assistant ministers: Patrick Gorman and Senators Tim Ayres and Jenny McAllister, and one junior minister Stephen Jones.

While there are four possibilities to take up the other vacant cabinet role, there are really only two choices being considered: Senators McAllister and Ayres, with Ayres the frontrunner to secure the promotion, largely because he and Albo are good mates.

McAllister is still a chance because she’s in the Left (like the rest of the options) and she’s a senator (like Ayres). Apparently team Labor is keen to boost the number of senators holding ministerial portfolios.

Currently, there are only four, but if the two retirements are replaced by a pair of senators that number jumps to six, which makes the business of the Senate easier.

Opinion polls are now consistently predicting the next election will be closer than that of 2022, so the chances of a hung parliament have risen sharply.

The likelihood is growing that the Greens and the ‘teal’ independents will decide which major party forms government for the next three years: Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party, or the Coalition led by Peter Dutton.

With Labor likely to win more seats than the Coalition, a hung parliament would see the Greens become either a formal partner in government – as they were under the Gillard government – or a strong third party with the power to dictate terms to a weakened Labor administration.

The implications for national policy are enormous given the Greens’ agenda to radically alter the way the economy operates, how climate change should be addressed, and even the way Australia should respond to the pro-Palestinian movement.

If a re-elected Albanese government lacks the numbers to govern on its own terms, it will be almost impossible to resist concessions to the Greens on some or all of these fronts.

If Albo doesn’t strike a deal and tries to push through, his very survival would depend on crossbenchers not supporting a vote of no confidence which would trigger another election, perhaps just weeks later.

Given the fragile state of the Australian economy and the challenges voters are facing dealing with cost of living pressures, such volatility in Canberra risks making a bad situation even worse.

Anthony Albanese will announce his first reshuffle on Sunday since Labor won power in 2022.

The announcement will be made on Sunday, though hotly tipped to get Ms Burney’s position is Malarndirri McCarthy – an Indigenous senator from the Northern Territory.

This would allow the Government to move beyond the humiliating defeat and try to reframe its policies and goals for Indigenous Australians.

Tasmanian senator Carol Brown announced on Saturday she would step aside from her position as assistant minister for transport and infrastructure.

Ms Brown is stepping back for health reasons and will stay in parliament, but it does create an opening in the outer ministry.

NSW senator Jenny McAllister is tipped to be promoted to the outer ministry while Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy or Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh could be promoted to the Cabinet.

Further openings could be made by sacking people, but it’s unlikely because it would give the Coalition a chance to crow that incompetent ministers are causing the Government to fall apart.

Instead, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles could likely to be moved to other positions, rather than being sacked.

The Opposition has been calling for both of them to be sacked since the High Court’s NZYQ ruling late last year led to convicted criminal asylum seekers being released from indefinite detention because no other country will take them.

Another 72 were convicted of assault and violent offending, including kidnapping and armed robbery, 16 had domestic violence and stalking convictions and 13 committed serious drug offending.

High Court rulings are separate from governmental decisions, but the Labor ministers took the brunt of the criticism.

Murray Watt, who is currently the Agriculture Minister, could be promoted to the Home Affairs portfolio to replace Ms O’Neil.

Another possibility is that Industrial Relations Minister Tony Burke could take over  Home Affairs, with Mr Watt then replacing him in industrial relations.