Legal experts say law changes are needed to ensure future prime ministers can’t secretly appoint themselves to other portfolios and backed a parliamentary inquiry into the Morrison ministries saga.
Professor George Williams and Professor Luke Beck both said Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue is likely to have concluded that former prime minister Scott Morrison did not act illegally by secretly appointing himself to administer the health, finance, home affairs, treasury, and industry, science, energy and resources portfolios in 2020 and 2021.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a press conference in Leichhardt on Monday.Credit:Kate Geraghty
On Monday afternoon the head of the solicitor-general’s department briefed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Donaghue’s advice regarding Morrison’s appointment to the five additional portfolios. The prime minister will take the advice to cabinet on Tuesday morning to discuss the issue with his ministers before releasing it publicly.
Albanese said ahead of the briefing the concentration of power by Morrison had not been in line with parliamentary conventions.
“Clearly there are real questions to be answered here, there is a question of legality. Now there hasn’t been a suggestion of illegality but there have been questions raised about how this could occur, how it fits in with the conventions and the normal accountability mechanisms and checks and balances that are there in our parliamentary democracy,” he said.
“There’s a basic fundamental weakness in checks and balances. If no one knows who the minister is, then how can they be held to account for decisions which are made?”
Williams, a constitutional law expert at the University of NSW, said it was unlikely the solicitor-general would identify any breaches of law by Morrison but said parliament should separately inquire into the matter, with one option being through a special joint committee comprising members from both chambers.
“This may be legal in the sense it hasn’t breached any law, but it’s clearly wrong. It amounts to poor governance, undermines cabinet, and cuts across the fundamental role of parliament to exercise scrutiny of ministerial actions and appointments,” he said.
Williams said amending the Ministers of State Act to require publication of ministerial appoints was “a logical” way of approaching the issue, but said the government could also introduce a separate Act to require transparency.
Beck, a constitutional law expert at Monash University, also called backed amendments to the Ministers of State Act.
“Every time a portfolio responsibility changes, every time a department takes on a different area of policy responsibility and every time the minister responsible for legislation changes it should be published immediately in the gazette,” Beck said.
He said if the broader issues of constitutional conventions and proper checks and balances in a parliamentary democracy aren’t being considered, “then the solicitor-general’s advice will be fairly unexciting, as we know that appointing Morrison to these ministries was in a black letter law sense, legal”.
Beck said a series of unanswered questions remained for an inquiry to examine, including “who knew, when did they know, what did they do about it, did Morrison give them instructions about it, why didn’t the governor-general publish this in his diary and did Morrison instruct the governor-general not to tell people?”
Liberal MP Bridget Archer on Monday said Morrison needed to consider his position in parliament and backed a wider inquiry into the matter that would examine how and why it happened and the secrecy around the appointments. She also said the inquiry should cover the role of Governor-General David Hurley and the public service.
Speaker Milton Dick is also considering a request from the Greens to refer Morrison to the privileges committee, which can examine whether he misled parliament or if his actions were in contempt.
With Katina Curtis
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