i think there's another reading of the shuffle out to the ambassadorships.

neither mccallum nor dion strike me as the type to work past retirement: they'll both be cashing in at 65. and, not a day later, either.

i mean, they'll be around. just not all day. and not every day.

mccallum will be past retirement in late 2019. dion will be a few months from it.

so, they'd probably both have left before or shortly after the next election.

they're also both in relatively safe seats. certainly, either by-election would be an upset if it went to another party.

we're not quite mid-mandate, but i suspect that the government would love to get a measure of the actual support on the ground. so, this is a way you can do that: you ask some people to step down a little early, and then you can run the by-election to figure out where you're sitting.

i'm not proposing that this is the only reason things happened. i'm proposing that it may be one of the reasons things happened.