Team Turnbull is taking shape, with the new prime minister making key hires to replace the public servants who have been filling in since the change of prime ministership.
He is drawing staff largely from his own long-serving and loyal advisers or his former staffers returning from the private sector, as well as some new young talent and some experienced staff from the John Howard era.
After the highly centralised operation of his predecessor, Tony Abbott, Turnbull has said his ministers will be his primary advisers on each portfolio and his office will not be structured to second-guess them.
The secretary of Turnbull’s old department of communications, Drew Clarke, continues to serve as a temporary chief of staff, with no news yet on a replacement.
Sally Cray, a former head of corporate affairs at the ABC and long-term Turnbull adviser, is principal private secretary and Tony “Parko” Parkinson – a former journalist, adviser to former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer, and most recently corporate affairs manager for Coles – is director of strategy. Jon Dart, another Turnbull loyalist and former journalist, will work with Parkinson.
Policy advisers will be organised into five broad teams.
Frances Adamson, currently Australia’s ambassador to Beijing and formerly chief of staff to Labor minister Stephen Smith in both the foreign affairs and defence portfolios, will be international adviser overseeing foreign and national security policy. Her team includes Justin Bassi, a former acting assistant secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department in charge of cyber security and most recently an adviser to the attorney general, George Brandis, and long-term Turnbull adviser Peter Anstee.
Social policy will be overseen by Kerry Pinkstone, a former Turnbull adviser who left to work at Twiggy Forrest’s Generation One Indigenous employment advocacy group and advisers include Amy Dobbin, who previously worked for Turnbull’s former parliamentary secretary Paul Fletcher and at the New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Another group will cover climate, water, infrastructure and cities policy, including Bruce Male, a former Howard government adviser who was also on the staff of former water minister Bob Baldwin and has detailed policy knowledge of what could be a controversial area.
Turnbull’s “signature” policy of innovation will be handled alongside higher education and science by advisers including Ali McDonald, a former Turnbull adviser who left for a stint with Google and in the bureaucracy and Mark Brudenell, another former adviser who will handle the digital economy.
The economics team are in the final stages of hiring.
Turnbull’s head of communications is David Bold, with the media team including former Channel Ten journalist Matt Moran and former Simon Birmingham adviser Caitlin Keage and former Eric Abetz adviser Erika Seymour.
The former Howard chief of staff Senator Arthur Sinodinos, as Turnbull’s cabinet secretary, is also crucial to the policy and cabinet operation. Another former Howard staffer, Tony Nutt, who oversaw the transition from Abbott to Turnbull, was formally appointed as the Liberal party’s federal director on Friday after the resignation of the long-serving Brian Loughnane, husband of Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin.
