Australia to make posts public to avoid repeat of power grab
Source: AP
By ROD McGUIRK today
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An inquiry into a former Australian prime minister secretly appointing himself to multiple ministries recommended Friday that all such appointments be made public in the future to preserve trust in government.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would recommend his Cabinet accept all of the retired judge ’s recommendations at a meeting next week.
Albanese ordered the inquiry in August after revelations that his predecessor Prime Minister Scott Morrison had taken the unprecedented steps of appointing himself to five ministerial roles between March 2020 and May 2021, usually without the knowledge of the existing minister.
The extraordinary power grab came to light after Morrison’s conservative coalition was voted out of office in May after nine years in power.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attends a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Friday, Nov. 25, 2022. An inquiry into former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison who secretly appointing himself to multiple ministries has recommended that all such future appointments be made public to preserve trust in government. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/health-australia-covid-scott-morrison-government-and-politics-a4afda69edc43deaabba5b9fa540d6ef
= new reply since forum marked as read
In the last 24 hours we have become aware of one new Scott Morrison ministry, bringing the total number of known ministries to six. All six ministries are linked. We believe there may be further undetected Scott Morrison ministries in the community – testing is currently underway. We apologise that there has been a complete lack of testing undertaken over the past two years.
https://www.theshovel.com.au/2022/11/25/scott-morrison-ministries-update-for-25-november-2022/
The Guardian has a longer, if less informative, article about this
Bell [judge leading the investigation] found that Morrison was concerned about his ministers’ exercise of statutory power in cases that were not subject to cabinet oversight.
Such powers included the home affairs minister’s God-like powers of visa cancellation, the treasurer’s powers to block foreign takeovers, and the industry minister’s power to approve or kill off the PEP-11 gas project.
All these could be consolidated in Morrison’s hands using the trick learned at the start of the pandemic – to be sworn in to administer a colleague’s portfolio.
