Albo promises inquiry for job-hungry ScoMo
PRIME Minister Anthony Albanese has indicated that an inquiry and further reforms will occur after the revelation that his predecessor Scott Morrison secretly swore himself into five ministries.
Mr Morrison appointed himself to the ministerial portfolios of health, finance, home affairs, treasury, and industry, science, energy, and resources between March 2020 and May 2021.
The former prime minister has since defended his actions and argued he needed the “emergency powers” in case of “extreme situations” during the height of Covid.
Legal advice will be delivered by the Solicitor General on Monday, outlining what happened, how it occurred and if there will be any legal repercussions for Mr Morrison.
But Mr Albanese has indicated that even if Mr Morrison’s actions were found to be legal, he would look to conduct an inquiry or deliver reforms so “something like this can never happen again”.
“I‘m not going to pre-empt the advice that we receive, but very clearly there’s a need for proper scrutiny of what occurred here,” he told Sky News on Sunday.
“This was an undermining of our parliamentary democracy and what the Solicitor General will advise on is of course the legal issues. There’s separate questions about the functioning of our democracy, about conventions and whether any conventions have been overturned, and whether there’s a need for any reforms required to ensure that something like this can never happen again.”
Mr Albanese said while there was no indication that Mr Morrison had done anything illegal, he described the actions as “beyond” comprehension.
“I haven’t seen yet a suggestion that anything illegal has happened but what is very clear is that conventions have been overturned completely and ignored, and the Westminster system of our democracy has been undermined by the decisions that were made by the former prime minister,” he said.
“It's beyond my comprehension how this could occur, not only how it actually eventuated but even how would you even think of doing such a measure.”
It emerged earlier in the week that Mr Morrison signed off on $828m worth of industry grants while he was acting as industry minister.