23 hours ago.

Updated 22 hours ago

The Australian Business Network

Do you remember when Ed Husic was booted out of Anthony Albanese’s cabinet in 2025? The former Minister for Industry and Science certainly does.

The backbencher also hasn’t forgotten who he blamed for his career crash: deputy PM and Defence Minister Richard Marles, or the “factional assassin”, as Husic described him.

There is a weird sort of person who reduces everything to factional politics. But that bit of history — just over 12 months old — is worth recalling after Husic’s headlining grabbing attack on AUKUS.

Husic, an increasingly wayward member of the NSW Right, lost his spot because of cold factional arithmetic. The Victorian Right, overseen by Marles, increased its numbers in caucus relative to the NSW Right at the 2025 election so it demanded one of their erstwhile spots in Albanese’s ministry.

It’s how Labor cabinets are made. Think the factional sausage making unfair? Join another party.

Marles elevated his factional enforcer, Sam Rae, now the baby-faced Minister for Aged Care and Seniors.

Before the blood had been cleaned up from the cabinet room, NSW Right legend Paul Keating issued a statement in Husic’s defence that personally ripped into Marles for leading “a faction demonstrably devoid of creativity and capacity.”

On Tuesday, Husic repaid the favour with his targeted strike on the AUKUS submarine deal, a project Keating has stridently opposed since it was first announced by the Morrison government in 2022. His attack was delivered hours before Marles was to give a keynote at a defence conference held by The Australian in Canberra and appeared to be co-ordinated with an AUKUS spray from Peter Garrett (once a minister in the Rudd government and now the head of an “independent” inquiry into the submarine project).

The personal payback is clear enough, but what is Husic’s cunning plan here? After his post-election knifing, he’s spoken about wanting to return to cabinet.

For that to happen, he needs the support of the NSW Right, which is nominally convened by Matt Thistlewaite, although its real centres of gravity are Tony Burke and Chris Bowen.

Husic would also likely need to jump ahead of some talented factional members who are also in the queue, chief among them Andrew Charlton.

And after helping to drum up the campaign against AUKUS at Labor’s national conference in July — and giving the PM an almighty headache — he would need Albanese to not make a captain’s call to block his return. Fancy his chances?

Read related topics:Anthony AlbaneseAUKUSWill GlasgowWill GlasgowNorth Asia Correspondent

Will Glasgow is The Australian’s North Asia Correspondent, now based in Beijing. He has lived and reported from Beijing and Taipei since 2020. He is winner of the Keith McDonald Award for Business Journalist of the Year and previously worked at The Australian Financial Review.