This was published 5 years ago
Editorial
Reshuffled cabinet is not just about personalities
Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Deputy Premier John Barilaro with members of the public on Sunday after announcing the new ministry.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Selecting a new cabinet after an election is a crucial moment for the future of a government and Premier Gladys Berejiklian has made some intriguing decisions in her post-election reshuffle over the weekend.
Ms Berejiklian said she was "spoiled for choice" in choosing her team. She made the right move in returning Rob Stokes to the fraught planning portfolio which will benefit from his academic background as a town planner. He is also charged with implementing Ms Berejiklian's campaign pledge to put public spaces at the centre of planning.
Sarah Mitchell, a regional MP whose children attend state schools, has been chosen as Education Minister and hopefully that perspective will ensure she considers the interests of disadvantaged schools. She has already won praise from her respected predecessor Adrian Piccoli.
Ms Berejiklian was also right to strip Stuart Ayres of the sports portfolio where he is associated with the controversial stadiums policy.
As important as the personnel changes however is the chance to rethink the structure of portfolios. Ms Berejiklian has made a smart and perhaps historic move by reshaping the transport ministries.
Instead of the old division between a roads department on one hand and on the other a transport department for all the other modes of transport such as rail, buses, ferries and the like, Ms Berejiklian has broadly divided the portfolio into regional and metropolitan.
Transport Minister Andrew Constance will take over major roads presumably including the freeways of Sydney and all Sydney's public transport while Paul Toole of the Nationals will be in charge of regional transport and roads.
This is a good move on several levels. It corrects the tradition in Coalition governments that the roads portfolio is considered a National Party fiefdom. That often led to country ministers who focused excessively on regional electorates rather than Sydney where most of the money is spent.
Equally, the old system of splitting the ministries by mode of transport entrenched institutionally the ideological rift between cars and public transport. Roads ministers pushed for freeways and transport ministers for trains and buses. Indeed in the last government there was a third Minister for WestConnex who was only concerned about one road.
As minister for all Sydney transport, Mr Constance should now have a mandate to look at integrated transport solutions without discriminating between modes, balancing the interests of motorists, public transport users, cyclists and pedestrians.
In another break from tradition, energy and environment have been handed to one minister, Matt Kean. Ms Berejiklian has not explained why she is merging the two portfolios but it might be inspired by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's decision in 2016 to do the same thing at a federal level.
The logic for Mr Turnbull was to give one minister the responsibility for preparing the electricity sector for a low-carbon future. Even though Ms Berejiklian barely mentioned climate change during the campaign, the new merged ministry makes sense if it is a step towards drafting a policy for transforming the energy sector.
In an interesting experiment, Ms Berejiklian has created a new minister for customer service with a remit to run the Services NSW shopfronts.
Upper house leader Don Harwin has been given charge of Arts and Aboriginal Affairs, two solid portfolios which will require his attention. Ministerial positions have been scrapped for the Hunter and Illawarra but created for western NSW. It will take time to see how these decisions are implemented before making a judgment.
- The Herald's editor Lisa Davies writes a weekly newsletter exclusively for subscribers. To have it delivered to your inbox, please sign up here