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As a thought experiment, suppose cabinet mattered. Or at least, suppose we thought it should.

Suppose, that is, there were a number of serious issues facing the country — the economy, national security, climate change, social and economic inequality — of a kind that placed a premium on effective government action, and on cabinet as the central institution of that government.

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In such circumstances we should insist not only that cabinet should perform, collectively, at the highest possible level, but that every member of it should be the best candidate for the job — that each should possess those qualities of judgment, experience, leadership, managerial competence, communications ability and so on that are required of a minister. That is, if cabinet mattered.

I realize I am describing a fantasy. Cabinet does not matter, and has not for some time, which is how we came to have a federal cabinet with 40 people in it. Even the notion that it should matter is very much a minority view. Rather, we expect cabinet to perform a rather different role from the one I have described. It does not govern: that is the job of the prime minister, and of the group of political staff he has around him, and of the bureaucracy beyond them. The cabinet’s job, rather, is to provide representation — to “reflect the country back to itself” — in a way that we used to expect of Parliament.