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

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.

Though Ms McCarthy worked hard on last year's failed Voice referendum, unlike Ms Burney, she was not seen by the public as central to the campaign.

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.

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.

As the furniture gets moved around 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.

By Peter Van Onselen

Anthony Albanese will announce the changes being made to his ministerial lineup on Sunday, but he will not decide who moves into his cabinet himself.

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.

By Peter Van Onselen

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.