It always seemed rather extraordinary that people around Parliament House were suggesting that the government really needed Barnaby Joyce back in harness to "restore discipline" to the Nats.

Seriously? The deputy prime minister is not the instigator of discipline but a man with a long personal history of creating havoc for the government of which he was a part – dating back to his days as a senator – and now, as leader, engaging in vindictive score settling in cabinet appointments on a scale we have not seen in some years.

Darren Chester has been sacked unceremoniously from cabinet – not even just demoted – because he was a threat to Joyce. There has been no criticism of him as a minister.

Keith Pitt was similarly dumped, for equally pathetic reasons, from his position as a parliamentary secretary.

The possibility of some of the Nationals who are on the wrong side of this internal brawl walking to the cross bench now hovers. You can only hope – in the interests of at least someone demonstrating some discipline and even a little bit of class – that they resist the temptation.

In structuring his front bench Malcolm Turnbull has not followed the advice of John Howard, who always argued that people had to serve their time in junior positions before wending their way up into the cabinet – an argument which kept Turnbull himself in the outer Howard ministry until he bludgeoned his way in.

Instead, the prime minister has promoted two men who would be largely unknown to most voters straight into the cabinet, with Queensland's David Littleproud becoming minister for agriculture and water resources after just 18 months in parliament and John McVeigh – who the prime minister personally rates – coming in as regional development minister (with experience as a minister in Queensland).


All this noise overshadows the two central structural changes in the cabinet, with the final elevation of Peter Dutton as the Minister for Home affairs – with two junior ministers - and Michaelia Cash coming in to the very centre of the government by the grouping into one of the employment and industry portfolios. She also gets a seat on the expenditure review committee of cabinet.

Noise of the Nationals aside, the most striking feature of the cabinet reshuffle is the entrenchment of the power of the two most lethal political operators in the government – and the men on whom the prime minister most relies: Dutton and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.

But thanks to the Nats, we finish the year as we have endured most of it: being reminded that it is all about you.