Life on the West Island - The boy stood on the burning deck

Recent political events on the West Island have brought to mind an image from the dying days of the ineffectual William McMahon coalition government in 1972. Almost exactly 50 years ago, The Australian published what has become a famous cartoon by its resident artist Bruce Petty. For copyright reasons, the cartoon cannot be reproduced, but it was accompanied by this text, which was a paraphrase of the much-parodied 1826 poem Casabianca by Felicia Hemans:

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled,
And a staggering piece of insight
Kept running around in his head.

When the flame of truth hits the ship of state
And the tides of time are turning,
They tend to bucket the captain
When the ship is what is burning.

The cartoon pictured Prime Minister Billy McMahon as a hapless little boy on the deck of a ship afire and about to sink during a fierce naval battle. The diminutive McMahon was being doused with multiple buckets of water as the fire raged. In the poem, the boy was the son of the ship’s captain, already dead from wounds, but remaining steadfastly at his designated post until the end. Hemans wrote that the noblest thing which perished there, was that young faithful heart. No such epitaph could be written for Billy McMahon, whose government dissolved in the heat of the It’s Time campaign, which brought Labor to power for the first time in 23 years.

There are some parallels between McMahon’s record and that of the recently departed Morrison government, where in past days it has been revealed that ScoMo had himself appointed as a joint minister in five other portfolios, mostly without informing the occupants of those ministries, cabinet or his party colleagues and entirely hiding this extraordinary action from parliament and the public, although two conservative journalists were in on the secret.

Both Morrison and McMahon led weak teams of ministers; they largely sat on their hands and introduced very little legislation or new policy; and they centralised decision-making and power to their personal offices. Accused of being indecisive by opposition leader Gough Whitlam, McMahon produced a media release listing over 100 “decisions” made by his government. Most of them were decisions not to take action on important issues or decisions to defer items to a later date! McMahon was a one-man band who cultivated glowing compliments from media barons with whom he was close friends. The Australian Dictionary of Biography makes this assessment of his character:

Ambitious and pragmatic (‘Politics is trying to get into office’) McMahon was accused of leaking information, spreading calculated lies and engaging in intrigue. He was a difficult personality: Alan Reid wrote of his ‘nervy intensity’. Indecisive and accident-prone, he made damaging slips of the tongue.

Scott Morrison often invoked the hallowed image of Sir Robert Menzies as the Prime Minister he most resembled. But in many ways he was more like the calculating moral vacuum that was Billy McMahon. And after the revelations about Morrison’s power grabs through secret ministries, Morrison has mostly been reviled by his former colleagues and left to stand alone on the burning deck, trying vainly to defend the indefensible.

Writing in The New Daily, senior editor James Robertson highlighted the situation now confronting both the former Prime Minister and the entire political system:

Scott Morrison is watching a scandal over his secret cabinet self-appointments unfold from the safety of the back benches. But contamination from his radioactive prime ministership is spreading through Australia’s system of government and now, at the very top, threatens Governor-General David Hurley, who signed off on five duplicate Morrison ministries.

A new call for a Royal Commission into the GG’s role hints at looming trouble for an office which must be seen to float above politics. UNSW Law Professor Rosalind Dixon says Mr Morrison proposed to change cabinet so radically by giving himself secret powers overlapping with his colleagues’ that the GG should have asked if it threatened the constitutional principles his job exists to uphold.

“We need to hear from him,” she said. “Either we need transparency or a clear recognition on the part of both the Prime Minister and the Governor-General that relevant appointments were made in error – or we need a Royal Commission.

“I think, unfortunately, this is actually now in that (Royal Commission) category. “It might well be unconstitutional to give an overlapping portfolio. “He has to explain himself. Unless and until he does satisfactorily, I don’t think he has discharged his responsibilities.” A single minister usually has power over a portfolio. Secretly dividing it could lead to conflicting decisions or legal challenges; Professor Dixon says the GG should have sought assurances about such problems before assenting to the appointments.

Now that Prime Minister Albanese has received the Solicitor-General’s opinion that the actions of his predecessor fundamentally undermined the principles of responsible government, the ball is in the current federal government’s court. Albanese has announced a thorough independent inquiry into Morrison’s actions, but has yet to spell out how it will operate. It seems that parliament will censure Scott Morrison, but not refer him to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee. Albanese is anxious not to focus any blame on the Governor-General, so setting up an inquiry will be tricky. In any case, all sides are agreed that there must be structural changes to ensure that no future Prime Minister can swear himself in as a co-ministry in secret and that all ministerial responsibilities will be clearly defined and published so that the public can be sure who is actually in charge.

Meanwhile, Scott Morrison is left stranded and alone like the boy standing on the burning deck, but with none of the “nobility” ascribed to that young man. West Island politics can only be better if ScoMo departs public life as quickly and quietly as possible – leaving behind a burning Liberal Party ship.