Extract from ABC News
Analysis
"Meep, Meep, Meep!", exclaimed the Labor MP this week cheerily as he anticipated the release of the Bell inquiry into Scott Morrison's multiple ministries.
"That, of course, is the sound of a truck reversing over a rotting carcass."
Pragmatic politics was hardly the chief reason the prime minister commissioned former High Court Judge Virginia Bell to conduct an inquiry into the bizarre episode of Scott Morrison appointing himself to multiple ministries without telling any of his colleagues.
It's hard to find anyone involved in the law or federal politics who can quite wrap their heads around either why the former prime minister would have thought this was a good idea politically, or administratively, to act as he did.
And it’s even harder to find anyone who can quite fathom all the implications for the way we "think" the rules of our governance work, that he was so easily able to do what he did. Or in how it was allowed to happen by the bureaucrats and advisers surrounding the PM or the Governor-General.
Which is why the Bell inquiry is so important. Yet even such an extensive inquiry is unable to really reveal just what was going on in the former prime minister's head that made him think it was OK to be sworn to be responsible for effectively running half the government, to be able to overrule three of his ministers on major policy decisions, yet not tell anyone.
Yet nonetheless there was certainly a vein of pragmatic politics in the timetable Anthony Albanese set for the inquiry.
In choosing November 25 as the date for Justice Bell to report, the PM was choosing the day before the Victorian state election, and the end of the second last week of federal parliament sitting for the year.
The release of the report was guaranteed to chew up a lot of media space and oxygen that might otherwise be devoted to a late assault on Victorian Labor Premier Dan Andrews, particularly from the News Corp media.
And it meant an entire weekend of media focus on the actions of the former prime minister and his government to prime the discussion in federal parliament ahead of the last week of sittings.
The report shreds Morrison's credibility
But such timing issues are on a scale of "pragmatic politics" that looks like kindergarten compared to the blatant disregard for process, colleagues or accountability that Bell describes in her report.
The report shreds any last remnants of credibility the former prime minister might have in regards to his disdain for proper process and in the way he treated his colleagues and the public.
Justice Bell doesn't call the prime minister a liar, but dances splendidly through a range of creative terminology which doubts the reliability of what he said, in writing, through his lawyers, in response to her questions about the circumstances of him appointing himself to no less than six of 14 government departments (not including the one he considered adding to the collection, but subsequently did not act upon).
It further documents what can only appear to be an exceptionally sneaky way of going about running a government.
"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," Justice Bell writes.
"Mr Morrison's choice not to inform Mr Cormann, Ms Andrews or Mr Frydenberg of his appointments to administer departments of which each was portfolio minister out of the wish not to be thought to be second guessing them remains difficult to reconcile with his understanding that each appointment had been notified in the Gazette.
"One might have expected Mr Morrison to have informed each of these Ministers of the appointments had that been his understanding."
As veteran press gallery journalist Niki Savva documents in her new book, Bulldozed, Morrison's colleagues were shocked, appalled and angry at Morrison's actions, most notably Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
The responsibility to speak up
But perhaps more alarming is the dysfunction within Morrison's office and the senior parts of the public service which meant that no-one stopped, or even challenged, the former PM about his actions.
These are revelations which should haunt those who occupy the halls of power about their responsibility to speak up.
The chief of staff in the office of prime minister, John Kunkel, "had little involvement in, or knowledge of, the appointments to administer the Departments of Health and Finance", and "had no recall of either of [the] appointments [to Home Affairs or Treasury] or of the proposal that Mr Morrison also be appointed to administer the [Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment".
Of the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, Justice Bell observes, amongst other things that "it remains that Mr Gaetjens as Secretary of PM&C, and with knowledge of the appointments and the lack of publicity that surrounded them, at no time sought to raise the propriety of them with Mr Morrison".
"What this says about the effectiveness of the partnership between the elected government and its senior officials raises issues that have been considered elsewhere and which is not within my Terms of Reference."
It was not as if the public service was not producing the advice that said there were problems in what Morrison was doing. There just seemed to be a total breakdown in this message either getting to the PM, or it being listened to.
There may have only been one instance where Morrison actually used his secretly-gained powers: to stop a gas project going ahead (in itself a very significant decision, which overruled the minister responsible, and which is now subject to court action).
But he sought to move into other portfolios, as Bell says, not because of the pandemic, but to give him executive power to overrule decisions including on foreign investment, visas and citizenship.
The Bell report confirms all this through the detached view of one of Australia's premier lawyers.
New legislation is on the way
There was another reason the new government released her report as soon as it came out: the plan is to give drafters the time to produce legislation over the weekend, to be introduced into the Parliament on Monday, to implement Bell's recommendations for change which would ensure this could never happen again.
That's an appropriate response to a shameful episode which both Bell and the Solicitor-General conclude "fundamentally undermined" the principles of responsible government, and was "apt to undermine public confidence in government" and was "corrosive of trust in government."
Parliament may have something to say about this episode when it meets on Monday. It should. The sound of the reversing truck might just be appropriate.
Pragmatic politics suggests the government will do its best to spread the damage to the rest of the Coalition, too.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
No comments:
Post a Comment