Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been named as Australia’s most powerful person, but Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is closing in, according to The Australian Financial Review Magazine’s Power List revealed today.
Trade Minister Don Farrell remains at the top of the list of covert power players, while Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira – who raised the ire of mining magnate Gina Rinehart with his portrait of her at the National Portrait Gallery – is No.1 on the cultural power list.
This year’s Power List issue of AFR Magazine contains photographic portraits featuring topical backdrops illustrated by the Financial Review’s cartoonist, David Rowe. Rowe – a nine-time winner of the Australian Cartoonists Association’s Gold Stanley for best cartoonist of the year – drew the illustrations, which were then printed onto fabric and used as giant backdrops.
The portrait photos include Treasurer Jim Chalmers taming an inflation dragon, Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus relaxing on the beach and Anthony Albanese with a DJ’s turntable.
“I usually start with the character, so it took me a while to warm up given I had to leave them out of the cartoon. You have to lose the worry about what people will think,” Rowe said.
Other subjects photographed against a cartoon backdrop include the founders of the Betoota Advocate; the RBA governor Michele Bullock; ACTU national secretary Sally McManus and teals backer Simon Holmes à Court.
“There are quite a few debutants on this year’s list, which was also marked by big swings in the rankings given next year’s federal election,” said AFR Magazine editor Matthew Drummond.
The Power List consists of three main categories – Overt, Covert and Cultural – which are debated at length by two separate panels of well-connected insiders drawn from Australia’s political, business and cultural spheres.
The magazine’s Power Panel debated the shifting dynamics of power in 2024. RBA governor Michele Bullock moved into second place on the Overt List while Treasurer Jim Chalmers has fallen from second to fifth position.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton – who only just scraped onto last year’s Power List – is ranked fourth after outperforming expectations and leading the Coalition against Labor in the latest Financial Review/Freshwater Strategy poll. His rise comes as ACTU national secretary Sally McManus plummets on the list to eighth position thanks to a national scandal that has engulfed the CFMEU.
Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather is a new addition to the Power List, taking out ninth position thanks to his rising stature and popularity with younger voters locked out of the housing market. BHP chief executive Mike Henry also debuts on the Overt Power List in light of his campaigning against the government’s industrial relations reforms.
Trade Minister Don Farrell once again takes out the top spot on the Covert List. But it is the rise of mining magnate Gina Rinehart that captured the attention of our Panel, because of her active anti-renewables stance and her push into the cultural sphere through funding Olympic athletes. Her covert power sees her positioned as second, one ahead of Anthony Albanese’s chief of staff, Tim Gartrell.
Teals backer and reluctant Power Lister Simon Holmes à Court comes in at seventh with the panellists agreeing that his support of high-profile teals is frustrating the Coalition and Labor alike.
Panellists who decided the Overt and Covert Lists were Joel Fitzgibbon and Christopher Pyne – both former ministers – Scott Morrison’s former private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, director of AGL Kerry Schott, chancellor of Western Sydney University Jennifer Westacott; pollster Kos Samaras, data strategist Annie O’Rourke, Labor insider Lidija Ivanovski and the Financial Review’s Phillip Coorey and editor-at-large Michael Stutchbury.
The panel that decided the Cultural Power list included Warner Music Australasia president Dan Rosen, Curio Pictures managing director Jo Porter, director of National Gallery of Victoria Tony Ellwood, acting commissioner Infrastructure Australia Gabrielle Trainor and the Financial Review’s Mark di Stefano and Matthew Drummond.
Leading the Cultural Power list is Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira, followed by Olympic gold medallist Jessica Fox. Fellow Olympian Ariarne Titmus and singers Troye Sivan and Kylie Minogue, the Betoota Advocate’s Archer Hamilton and Charles Single, Federal Court judge Michael Lee and Racing NSW boss Peter V’landys also feature in the Top 10.
