Talk:Shadow ministry of Peter Dutton

Shadow Ministry or Shadow ministry
Just want to get an opinion on whether articles like this one should be named "Shadow Ministry of xx" or "Shadow ministry of xx". I personally have no preference on this one. Just want to confirm the consensus on this one. From Talk:Gillard government, the noun in "[last name]+[government or ministry]" should be lower case. However, there seems to be no consensus on shadow ministries. Previous shadow ministries have been named "Shadow Ministry of xx" but that does not mean that should be the correct formatting.

Potentially, shadow ministry articles may even be named "[last name]+[shadow ministry]". I would like to know the thoughts on this one.

Also who brought up the issue with me.  Marc nut 1996  (talk) 22:50, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Also notifying people who have previously discussed the casing in Talk:Gillard government.  Marc nut 1996  (talk) 23:02, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * TBH, this is the first "Shadow Ministry" or "Shadow ministry" article, I've ever seen. If there's more then this one, then they should be all deleted. GoodDay (talk) 23:12, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Should be renamed to 'shadow cabinet', all lower case when in the article text. Stephen 23:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * As Stephen say, it should be shadow cabinet in lower case in prose. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:45, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * (nom) While I agree with Stephen and Cinderella157, how about the title of the article?  Marc nut 1996  (talk) 01:01, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The article is about a shadow ministry though, not just a shadow cabinet - as I understand it, the whole lot is the ministry, with the first table of people referred to as the cabinet and the others as the rest of the ministry (see this) - being specifically labelled as outer ministry and assistant ministry. But either way, I would agree that shadow ministry of a leader is uncapitalised, while a specific office ("Shadow Minister for Women") needs capitalisation. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:23, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * p.s. This article says "with Jason Wood to serve outside cabinet as the shadow minister for “community safety, migrant services and multicultural affairs”. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * (nom) I also note that the Shadow cabinet of Australia already uses the lower case "c".  Marc nut 1996  (talk) 03:03, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * As a rule, (agreeing with Laterthanyouthink) capitalisation is reserved for titles (proper nouns, e.g., the Treasurer—and not the multiplicity of past treasurers). A "shadow minister" is really a slang term for an opposition non-minister—never an official title—and does not merit the dignity of cap initials. In a WP article title or subtitle, "Shadow" will be capped only if it is the first word. Bjenks (talk) 03:15, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * In the article "Shadow Ministry of Australia" is a rediredted link to Shadow cabinet of Australia. Titling the article as "shaddow cabinet of X" does not inherently restrict the scope of the article that it cannot include outer and assistant shaddow ministers or even other non-ministerial appointments within the opposition (if these aren't covered elsewhere). There is no need to be pedantic about the distinction. I would think that "shaddow cabinet" is more recognisable and sufficiently accurate/precise. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:29, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I think these articles should be standardised at "shadow ministry", because "shadow ministry" and "shadow cabinet" are not the same thing, and treating them as the same thing means that we're routinely listing people as being in a "shadow cabinet" who in fact weren't. We need to be "pedantic" because the latter is just factually wrong unless we're excluding outer shadow ministries. "shadow ministry of Peter Dutton" is much better than "Dutton shadow ministry" because the latter system just breaks down for every vaguely common name (including Dutton), a situation we've already run into with state ministries when we (my fault) tried that. I'm not sure on what basis there's a suggestion above that they don't belong on Wikipedia at all given that they're well-documented formal roles. I have no particular objection to lowercase in the article title (despite generally despising Wikipedia's recent decapitalisation kick), though "Shadow ministry" as the article title does look particularly silly. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 04:17, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The body of the article can make such a distinction between the shaddow cabinet and other appointments. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:33, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * It doesn't really seem to make sense to me to have to try to explain in the body of the article that the article isn't actually about what the title said that it was. It also puts the shadow articles out of sync with the actual ministries, which have always been at "ministry" for this obvious reason. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 04:53, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

If we follow the standard? as per First Howard ministry then it should be First Dutton shadow ministry or if Dutton is too common then First Peter Dutton shadow ministry? Aoziwe (talk) 08:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Howard had multiple terms as PM, hence the "first". If someone's in their first term, that's superfluous - see Albanese ministry. I'm also not sure we've ever had a discussion about splitting shadow ministry articles at all: Shadow Ministry of Bill Shorten, which would be the longest in recent times, deals with it all in one article. I think in practice opposition leaders don't last long enough in office to have enough reshuffles to make one article unwieldy, which it patently would be to try to do the same with, say, John Howard.


 * In terms of the naming convention, I think it's the ministry one that's broken here, not the shadow ministry, because in many cases there will have been other leaders of the same surname: "Shadow Ministry of So-and-So" (of any capitalisation) is really the only way to avoid that". "So-and-So shadow ministry" is a grammatical framing that I don't think is normally used. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 03:56, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Shadow cabinet of Australia with Shadow ministry of Peter Dutton
This article appears to be duplicative of the existing page for Shadow cabinet of Australia and can/should be merged there. IndyNotes (talk) 16:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose. One is a permanent description of Australian politics and the other a current description of the office holders. Compare - UK: Shadow cabinet with Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer; and Canada: Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet (Canada) and Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet of the 44th Parliament of Canada BeaujolaisFortune (talk) 19:27, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose: As above. --DilatoryRevolution (talk) 04:12, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose, one is about the concept, one is about the specific iteration. ITBF (talk) 10:37, 13 November 2022 (UTC)