Following the federal Cabinet reshuffle announced by Anthony Albanese on Sunday, the media focus was on him moving Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.

The ABC’s Courtney Gould reported that the PM stressed the changes “shouldn’t be construed as a failure on their part, and rejected suggestions the reshuffle was linked to criticism over the government’s handling” of the portfolios.

The report quoted the PM as saying “What Clare O’Neill and Andrew Giles have had to do is to repair the damage which has been done.”

In saying that, Albanese may have had in mind the damage which was revealed in the 2023 reports by former ASIO boss Denis Richardson and Police Commissioner Christine Nixon that showed evidence of scandalous visa maladministration and the awarding of problematic contracts in departments overseen by the likes of Scott Morrison, Alex Hawke, Karen Andrews and Peter Dutton, who at different times occupied the Home Affairs and Immigration portfolios during the nine years of the Coalition Government prior to May 2022.

But that is not what Albanese said.

Had the prime minister spoken his mind clearly instead of resorting to passive-voice weasel words about “damage which has been done”, he might have made direct reference to his predecessors in government whose neglect allowed lawless elements to engage in drug smuggling, gun trafficking and offshore processing operations which enabled suspected criminal operators to win multi-billion-dollar contracts without due diligence being undertaken, and that all this was happening during Peter Dutton’s maladministration of Home Affairs.

That Dutton’s department was accused of serious neglect and incompetence at the same time the former Home Affairs Minister had been making a name for himself as Australia’s tough man on border protection, is an indication that Dutton has no shame. It also showed that he was sufficiently unmoved to double-down, turning the blowtorch on O’Neil and Giles who were coming to grips with the mess that occurred on Dutton’s watch, including the massive backlog of unprocessed visa applications and unworkable systems.

An obliging media, led by Murdoch’s News Corp, gave little attention to the Richardson and Nixon reports of Dutton’s incompetence and likely corruption. Instead, they made a meal of Dutton’s faux indignation, focusing especially on his sweeping assertions about the supposed criminality of the refugees released by Giles following the High Court decision on indefinite detention being unlawful. Dutton insisted in tones of outrage that among the refugees were a random number of murderers, rapists and paedophiles, in words that recalled almost verbatim Donald Trump’s bald assertions about the rampant criminality of immigrants entering the US via the southern border with Mexico.

Curiously, when Albanese referred to O’Neill and Giles having to “repair the damage that has been done”, in reality he was unwittingly making a reference to the damage he inflicted on them and on Attorney General Mark Dreyfus when the High Court decided that refugees cannot lawfully be detained forever.

When Mark Dreyfus firmly corrected a Sky News reporter in December 2023, who demanded the government apologise for releasing the detainees in accordance with the High Court decision, Albanese revealed during an answer to a question in the House from Sussan Ley that Dreyfus was out of line and had apologised to the reporter.

Presumably Dreyfus had apologised on the PM’s instruction. It was clear that Albanese didn’t have his back in standing up for the High Court decision. The effect of that apology was to legitimise Dutton’s outrage over the release of the detainees and to validate Dutton’s media stance which was that Giles was to blame for the mess Dutton had created in immigration. It also took the initiative away from O’Neil, whose sustained attacks on Dutton were beginning to hurt him.

The damage done to Giles and O’Neil was largely damage caused by Albanese himself and was an indication of a serious insufficiency when it comes to accepted attributes of leadership. Good leaders stand by their people, especially if they are upholding values they jointly espouse. Albanese’s leadership deficit had already become apparent with his timid acquiescence to Morrison’s defence frolic of AUKUS rather than making a case for rejecting it as bad policy when he won government.

His faintheartedness was exploited by Dutton time and again, starting with the Voice referendum and more damagingly with the indecisiveness and ambiguity that have characterised his responses to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict. Those responses sparked an unnecessary confrontation with a lowly Senator of principle in Fatima Payman, which in turn occasioned the incalculable loss of support from Muslim and other Labor voters in key electorates. All the while, Dutton was adopting a simple response that fully supported Netanyahu’s unrestrained and brutal collective punishment of Palestinians.

For six months Dutton had repeatedly complained that Andrew Giles was a weak link and called on the PM to sack him. Giles was not a perfect Minister but was highly competent by, say, the standards set by his recent Coalition predecessors in the portfolio. In that context, the opportunity presented itself for Albanese to show some intestinal fortitude by firmly standing by Giles in the immigration portfolio, and thereby pointedly staring down Dutton’s bluster.

But he didn’t take that opportunity. By sacking Giles Albanese has validated Dutton’s attacks on the former minister, and invited the electorate to believe that Dutton is making the critical leadership calls on government policy. Yet again, Albanese had assisted Dutton to look strong, visionary and prime ministerial while confirming to much of the electorate that he was a dithering and indecisive prime minister with little or no spine.

In addition, by also effectively sacking Home Affairs Minister O’Neil, Albanese has given Dutton the gift of removing a highly competent and effective Home Affairs Minister from a portfolio that had allowed her to get under Dutton’s skin. The best Dutton had been able to do in countering O’Neil was to call her an “angry woman”, revealing that her blows had landed, even though the media largely refused to notice them.

The media didn’t notice because Albanese had not had the courage to take on the issue of media ownership, despite strong prompts from a Zoe Daniel motion in the House, a Senate Bill sponsored by Sarah Hanson-Young, and half a million petitioners led by Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and Sharan Burrow calling for a Murdoch Royal Commission.

Ironically, by sacking an Immigration Minister that the Opposition leader and a Coalition-friendly media had identified as a weak link, the Prime Minister has exposed himself as the Government’s weakest link. With 10 months left before an election is due to be called, Albanese’s advisers will urgently need to look for ways in which he can recast himself as the country’s leader.

His one shining moment to date was his overhaul of the Stage 3 tax cuts. That move should have pleased most voters and still may do so, but the media presented it as a broken election promise delivered by a sneaky political operator rather than by an astute statesman finding a way to correct a blatantly unfair tax policy.