“This has been a government of fraud,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Tuesday. He accused his predecessor of “destroying democracy” by taking over many government jobs and failing to inform the public.
Morrison, who is still a lawmaker but was replaced as prime minister during an election in May, was appointed minister of health, finance, home affairs, treasury and industry between March 2020 and May 2021, Albanese said. These were all important cabinet roles that already had ministers in place – and Morrison gained extensive additional powers by being sworn in as minister for those departments.
Some of Morrison’s colleagues have expressed anger and surprise, saying they had no idea they were sharing their jobs with their boss.
Albanese said Morrison’s secret appointments were revealed after an investigation and that it was not clear whether Morrison kept his posts until he was voted out earlier this year.
“It is completely extraordinary that these appointments were kept secret by the Morrison government from the Australian people,” Albanese said in Canberra. “It has undermined our democracy.”
Our democracy is precious. Our system relies on checks and balances, and the former government deliberately undermined those checks and balances. The Australian people deserve accountability and transparency, not secrecy. pic.twitter.com/fG8Y3Jcp3v
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) August 16, 2022
In a lengthy Facebook post on Tuesday, Morrison defended his actions, citing the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession in Australia in 2020 and stating that he acted in good faith in a crisis.
“These were extraordinary times and they required extraordinary measures to respond,” he said, adding that the risk of his ministers becoming “incapacitated, ill” or unable to do their jobs was ” very real” during the pandemic.
“As prime minister, I considered it necessary to establish protective measures,” he said. “… I took the precaution of giving myself the authority to administer various departments of the state should the need arise on account of the incapacity of a minister or in the national interest.” He added that he considered such actions as “prudent” and “responsible”.
“In hindsight, these deals were unnecessary,” Morrison said, adding that “there was a lot going on at the time.”
He stressed he never sought to act “in a joint ministerial capacity” and only used the extra jobs-related powers on one occasion in April 2021 to overturn approval of a controversial gas project off the coast of New South Wales. . He said the particular decision was taken “in the national interest” and was “the only matter I was directly involved with in this or any other department”.
Former minister Keith Pitt, who had responsibility for the gas project and headed the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources at the time, told Australian media he was unaware Morrison had joint oversight of his ministerial portfolio.
Another minister in Morrison’s government, Karen Andrews, who served as interior or home affairs minister, told Australian radio that she also didn’t know she was sharing her job.
“The Australian people have been let down, they have been betrayed,” she said, calling for Morrison to resign as a lawmaker. “For a former prime minister to behave in that way, to secretly swear in other portfolios… is absolutely unacceptable.”
Australian newspapers highlighted the outrage, while on social media the actions spawned memes and jokes about Morrison’s many jobs.
“Scott Morrison couldn’t do his job properly, and it turns out he didn’t trust his other ministers to do their jobs either,” Melbourne lawmaker and Australian Green Party leader Adam Bandt. has written on Twitter. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also criticized the “bad secret state appointments” and said any official who was in the know “showed a huge lack of respect and understanding for democratic governance”.
We should be very concerned that a PM, an AG, the GG and apparently their officials thought Morrison’s nasty secret state appointments were legitimate. Has anyone objected? Is resignation a protest? All of them showed a great lack of respect and understanding for democratic governance.
— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) August 15, 2022
Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, wrote that a lack of transparency can affect government institutions.
The exercise of additional government powers “must be announced in parliament and officially published so that members of the public know who is entitled to exercise particular powers,” she wrote in an opinion piece. “It is inappropriate for such matters to be kept secret – especially if they are kept secret from the cabinet and from the minister who has been officially given responsibility for a portfolio by the governor-general,” she added.
Albanese told the nation he would seek legal advice from the country’s attorney general about Morrison’s actions to determine next steps.
