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Senior Australian journalist Malcolm Farr got to the heart of the matter: “He deliberately did not tell most of his cabinet colleagues he was taking on five additional ministerial authorities, restricting the full details to the governor general, David Hurley, the then deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, prime ministerial staff, two journalists and, potentially, the Queen. More important, he didn’t tell the parliament or the people, a violation of important Westminster conventions” [1].
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I would probably learn to love winter too if I lived in the UK. There, every day is winter. The summer means heading to one of those kitty-litter beaches and hoping that somebody will come by selling mugs of an indiscernible hot meat drink before your thumb-faced children expire because they missed their morning beef. When you return home you find the government has declared martial law because the royal family’s cryochambers were never designed to battle temperatures above mild.
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Apparently Morrison told the Minster for Health (Liberal MP Ralph Hunt) about his extraordinary and secret move that he justified on the basis that it was needed in case Minister Hunt was incapacitated by Covid-19. The Minister for Resources and Water (National MP Keith Pitt) apparently discovered Morrison’s new but secret authority when Morrison vetoed an off-shore gas project (Pep-11), approved by Pitt but which was unpopular with local New South Wales voters. With these exceptions and the exception of the National Party Deputy PM Michael McCormack, apparently no members of the Liberal-National Party Coalition Government were aware of these unprecedented secret arrangement that were variously effected in 2020-2021. None of the affected Ministers were removed from their Ministerial positions.
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The new Labor Prime Minister Albanese (elected after the 21 May 2022 elections) referred the matter to the Solicitor General of Australia who on expert consideration found that that the appointments were legal. However the Solicitor General condemned the departure from responsible government: “Neither the people nor the parliament can hold a minister accountable for the exercise (or, just as importantly, for the non-exercise) of particular statutory powers if they are not aware that the minister has those powers. Nor can they hold the correct ministers accountable for any other actions, or inactions, of departments” [2].
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We survived the most wretched season in years. We survived the cries of the winter partisans, imploring us to embrace its dismal little fancies: the cosy fires, the big jumpers, the endless steaming bowls of soup.
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The key concerns were the departure from the normal and hitherto unviolated conventions that Ministers are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the government, and the appointments are made public (publicly gazetted). These core principles of Westminster-style democracies enable responsible government in which Ministers are held responsible for their actions and inactions.
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Goodbye, winter, a friendless season for losers. I mean this in the rudest possible terms, but particularly this year. Winter is a season for losers and a season for loss. It forces us to become worse versions of ourselves, taking us away from our friends and offering us nothing in return except the opportunity to complete our evening walks on hard mode. Meanwhile, everyone interesting immediately flees for summer in other parts of the world, which draws me into a blood feud with them.
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Listen to yourself. Do you have any shame? Nobody within a non-annoying income bracket has access to a fireplace, and Australian homes are notoriously so draughty that you can’t burp in your living room without someone telling you off about it on the street outside. Meanwhile, soup is a food most popular among a generation whose best years are so far in the past that their best years probably have a racist nickname. There’s a reason for that.
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The summer is dangerous for its own reasons but even they are preferable. Last year, for example, as soon as the days got longer, my body blasted out enough serotonin to force me to express-order a professional DJ deck I’ve never used and a pair of the smallest shorts you can own without a permit.
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The former Coalition Minister for Home Affairs, Karen Andrews, whose powerful Ministerial position was secretly acquired by Morrison, indignantly demanded that Morrison (now a backbencher MP) leave Parliament: “I had absolutely no knowledge and was not told by the [prime minister, the prime minister’s office] nor the department secretary. This undermines the integrity of government. This is just unacceptable, and if this is the way that he is prepared to conduct himself without an adequate explanation — even though it is now going to be well past the time when such an explanation should have been made — then it is time for him to leave the parliament and look elsewhere for employment” [5].
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The modern world is an increasingly bonkers place to try to make a life in, and you’ve probably realised by now that things aren’t going to get less bonkers any time soon. So I’m not going to spend another moment thinking about the lamest season on Earth. I don’t care what those communists at the Bureau of Meteorology say the temperature is – from now on it’s summer.
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These astonishing and unprecedented actions, while legal, were obnoxiously secret, and have been variously described as a “pseudo-constitutional coup”, a “power grab”, and a “dormant constitutional coup”, as set out below.
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When found out, Scott “Scomo” Morrison blustered that he organized these secret arrangements in 2020-2021 because of the Covid-19 Pandemic emergency, and kept it secret:“I think there was a great risk that in the midst of that [Covid] crisis those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic and could have had an effect on the day-to-day functioning of the government” [1].
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Australians were astonished by the revelation in August that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had secretly been appointed by the Governor General, General David Hurley, as a Minister for Health, Minister for Treasury, Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Finance, and Minister for Resources and Water. These extraordinary and secret actions, while legal, have grossly violated the core principles of accountable and responsible government in Australia, one of the world’s first democracies.
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