Extract from ABC News
Why on earth did he do it? It's been the persistent question asked — at times with an expletive thrown in — by senior Liberals, Nationals, bureaucrats and everyone else kept in the dark by Scott Morrison.
Yesterday, the former prime minister attempted to provide some answers. He wanted to explain both the decision to give himself ministerial powers and the extraordinary secrecy surrounding the whole exercise. He apologised for neither the decision nor the secrecy, only the "offence" he might have caused his former cabinet colleagues.
But what he did say was remarkably revealing.
Morrison put forward two reasons for taking on the five ministerial roles. The first was the fear of the existing minister being incapacitated by COVID. Fair enough, this was a legitimate fear. But it's not as if a minister has never been sick before. Indeed, a serving prime minister, Harold Holt, went missing altogether.
The Westminster system allows for acting ministers to be appointed immediately. There's no reason why Morrison couldn't have appointed someone else an acting minister if one of his team fell over. There's no reason why he couldn't have appointed himself as an acting minister, if he didn't think anyone else was up to it.
Quite an admission
The second, and more extraordinary, reason given by Morrison for giving himself what he called "reserve emergency powers" was one of trust. Or a lack thereof.
As the former prime minister put it yesterday, he did all this because, in part, he feared "some threat to the national interest as a result of unilateral action by an individual". In those circumstances, he felt the prime minister should have "the ability to take responsibility and to take action".
Let that sink in. The prime minister of the day was worried some of his chosen ministers with "unilateral decision-making powers" might act against the national interest.
If a prime minister doesn't trust someone to exercise ministerial powers appropriately, they shouldn't appoint them. If a prime minister fears a minister is going to use their powers against the national interest, they should sack that minister and appoint someone else. That's how the system works.
Instead, Scott Morrison took the unprecedented step of secretly giving himself the authority to override five ministers holding these "unilateral decision-making powers".
These powers held by some ministers can be sweeping. They're all laid out in Acts of Parliament. The Treasurer, for example, can block a major foreign investment. The Health Minister can "give any direction, to any person" during a biosecurity emergency. The Home Affairs Minister can cancel visas for rapists and murderers.
The Finance Minister had special pandemic powers to spend tens of billions of dollars without parliamentary approval.
Clearly, Morrison didn't think ministers alone should hold such powers, as the law allows. He admitted it yesterday. It's worth repeating his own words. Morrison said he feared "some threat to the national interest as a result of unilateral action by an individual".
This is quite an admission.
A crucial question of trust
Rather than negate this threat by giving Cabinet collective responsibility for such decisions, Morrison felt he alone should have the power to override. He arranged for the Governor General to give him this power. In secret.
The former Prime Minister says the fact he only used these "reserve powers" once (as best he can recall), proves he acted responsibly.
That's not the view of some of the senior public servants who served in his government, who believe Morrison fundamentally ignored the "doctrine of responsible government" by failing to be up front with them, the parliament, or the electorate as to precisely who held ministerial authority and who was therefore accountable.
The only time Morrison can recall using his "reserve powers", as he prefers to call them, was to override the Resources Minister Keith Pitt. He admits this had nothing to do with the pandemic. There were no fears Pitt might fall ill.
The Prime Minister's intervention was entirely due to fears his minister would make a decision against the national interest in relation to the PEP-11 gas project off the NSW coast.
He simply didn't trust Pitt on this.
But rather than replacing him as minister, Morrison secretly had himself sworn in as a second resources minister and blocked the project.
As many have noted, the secrecy in this whole exercise is hard to comprehend. But it's the lack of complete trust from a prime minister in the ability of his own ministers to act in the national interest that's even more extraordinary.
Morrison defends the secrecy on the grounds he didn't want ministers going about their jobs any differently. Had they known what the Prime Minister was up to, he said, this might have "undermined the confidence of ministers in the performance of their duties". Indeed.
Had they known (and had we all known), it would have been clear then what we know now — the Prime Minister lacked complete trust in his ministers.
No doubt he trusted them to a point, but as Morrison himself has now admitted, extraordinarily, he feared these ministers could pose "some threat to the national interest".
And only he could counter that threat, with "break glass in case of emergency" secret reserve powers. What an admission.
David Speers is the host of Insiders, which airs on ABC TV at 9am on Sunday or on iview.
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