EDITORIAL: Ed Husic’s faction whinge is the height of hypocrisy

“Disunity is death” has long been an indisputable aphorism in Australian politics.

Infighting and factional wars can only lead to bad outcomes, so the wisdom goes.

But there’s a far worse political sin than disunity, and that is the preservation of stability for its own sake.

Teams need to be refreshed to bring in new ideas and perspectives. Labor’s reshuffle strikes the right balance, with the key players remaining in their roles with some tinkering to fix problem areas — most significantly Murray Watt’s shift to environment to clean up the mess left by Tanya Plibersek who has been shunted to the social services portfolio.

Sometimes a little bloodletting is inevitable, even welcome. This time, the blood belonged to erstwhile attorney-general Mark Dreyfus and science minister Ed Husic, booted from the Cabinet to make way for new talent. Both were the victims of their own Labor Right faction, which chose to elevate others at their expense.

Mr Dreyfus appears to have taken his demotion in his stride, all smiles at Labor’s first caucus meeting last week.

Mr Husic however, is not doing OK. He skipped that meeting. Then on Sunday he lashed out at Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, calling the Labor Right heavy a “factional assassin”.

But Mr Husic is no stranger to Labor’s factional games. It is a system he has willingly been a part of decades.

It’s not even the first time he’s been a victim of it. Mr Husic stood down from the shadow ministry after the 2019 election to give his spot to his factional ally, then-senator Kristina Keneally.

The only real difference this time is that the men pulling the strings aren’t faceless — Mr Marles gave Mr Husic and Mr Dreyfus the courtesy of stabbing them in the front.

If Mr Husic wants to blast anyone, it should be his so-called allies in his own faction who decided he was the most expendable NSW Right Cabinet member.

Politics can be cruel and the factional system is one of its more brutal components.

It also is what gives Labor its discipline and allows its leaders to maintain order.

It is far from a perfect system. Its keeps far more talented people than Mr Husic confined to the backbench while less those of mediocre ability, but with friends in the right places, leapfrog their way into Cabinet.

There may be no such thing as a true meritocracy, but if Labor were one, surely rock-star economist and multi-squillionaire Andrew Charlton would be treasurer right now and not slogging it out on the fringes of relevance as an assistant minister for science and technology.

One of the toughest parts of being prime minister is keeping order within one’s own team, a challenge made bigger with a caucus as bountiful as that which Mr Albanese has received.

Not even the creative accounting of which Labor governments are so fond can make 94 Labor members go into the 30 ministry spots available.

As the great warrior poet Ice-T once said, don’t hate the playa, hate the game.