Life on the West Island - Full circle

The political wheel has come full circle for former West Island Prime Minister Scott Morrison. From being celebrated for his “miracle” 2019 election win and thus being regarded as a genius within the parliament, this week he was censured by that same parliament for “fundamentally undermining the principles of responsible government.” That conclusion came from a report by former High Court judge Virginia Bell, who echoed a similar position reached earlier by the Commonwealth Solicitor-General.

Mr Morrison’s fall from grace is all but complete – all that remains is for him to resign his seat in parliament. He has put up little persuasive evidence of reasons why he secretly installed himself in five extra portfolios, mostly without telling his cabinet or the colleagues already sworn in to those roles.

Some of those colleagues have now made public their dismay and disbelief at the manner in which they were deceived. This week, his loyal former deputy Josh Frydenberg made his displeasure known. In an interview with journalist Nikki Savva, he said I don't think there was any reason for Scott to take on the additional treasury portfolio. The fact he did take it, and it was not made transparent to me and others, was wrong and profoundly disappointing. It was extreme overreach.

Writing in Crikey, senior journalist Bernard Keane was scathing:

Why were Scott Morrison’s multiple ministries kept secret from most of the ministers involved, from the Parliament and from Australians? On that subject, the greatest liar ever to hold prime ministerial office in Australia seems determined to go out with one final whopper.

According to the Bell report, “responsibility for the failure to notify the public and the Parliament of the making of these appointments rests with Mr Morrison and not the governor-general or the office of the official secretary to the governor-general”. As well, nor

Did it rest with Prime Minister and Cabinet, which “has never arranged for the publication in the Gazette of ministerial appointments. PM&C views it as within the prerogative of the prime minister to announce the composition of, or changes to, the ministry.”

Morrison, through his lawyer, told Bell his public statements and Facebook posts were answers to her questions. In those statements, Morrison said he didn’t want ministers second-guessing themselves so he kept Mathias Cormann, Josh Frydenberg and Karen Andrews in the dark, and he didn’t want the public to know because it would be “misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst”.

Morrison should have left it there. But consistent with his long history of lying even when he doesn’t have to, he then went further. His lawyer wrote to Bell to tell her that neither Mr Morrison nor his office instructed PM&C not to gazette the appointments, nor was he or his office consulted on whether the appointments should be published in the Gazette. These decisions, like all such matters, were left to PM&C to determine in accordance with what they considered to be the usual practice.

But what did Morrison think was the “usual practice”? Bell asked and Morrison’s lawyer wrote back: “At the time of the appointments, the subject of the inquiry, Mr Morrison, had no reason to understand otherwise than that PM&C’s usual practice was to arrange publication in the Gazette of the names of the ministers and the offices they held.” That was a clear sign that Morrison was lying. And just to make it clearer, the lawyer added: The public statements by Mr Morrison were directed to the fact that he did not inform all relevant ministers or members of the public of the ministerial appointments by way of media release or public statement. However, this in no way suggests that he did not expect that the usual practice would apply and that PM&C would publish the appointments in the Gazette.

This statement makes zero sense. If Morrison didn’t want ministers to know he’d been sworn into their portfolios, as he said, that’s utterly inconsistent with his professed belief that in fact the appointments would be gazetted by PM&C as “the usual practice”.

As Bell notes: “Mr Morrison’s assumption that all the appointments were notified to the public in the Gazette is not easy to reconcile with his conduct at the time or with his public statements when the appointments came to light.” In fact, it’s utterly implausible that Morrison both thought the appointments would be gazetted and that the relevant ministers would remain unaware.

In her report, Judge Bell concluded: While few members of the public may read the Gazette, any idea that the gazettal of the prime minister’s appointment to administer the treasury (or any of the other appointments) would not be picked up and quickly circulated within the public service and the Parliament strikes me as improbable in the extreme. Finally, Mr Morrison was repeatedly pressed at his press conference on 17 August 2022 about his failure not only to inform his ministers but also to inform the public of the appointments. The omission on that occasion to state that he had acted at all times on the assumption that each appointment had been notified to the public in the Gazette is striking.

Mr Morrison rejected Bell’s detailed criticism, claiming that desperate times required desperate measures, and refusing to apologise to his former ministerial colleagues, the parliament or the public. Looking for sympathy from some of his erstwhile supporters, Mr Morrison threw his hands in the air, typically pointing the finger of blame at anyone but himself. “I have been mocked every day because of my faith because I am a Pentecostal,” he said. “I have surrendered this battle to God now. I have said, over to you.”

Writing in The Conversation, Michelle Grattan of the University of Canberra summed up the full circle turned by the West Island’s political wheel: Morrison’s descent from the 2019 political miracle man to the leader who undermined “public confidence in government” is one of the most remarkable stories in modern federal political history. To borrow a description Morrison tried to pin on Albanese, our former PM was indeed a “loose unit” – a good deal looser than we realised at the time.