Exclusive Mccormack reveals what he knew of Morrison ministries
Scott Morrison never told his deputy prime minister Michael Mccormack that to overrule a NSW gas project, he had himself appointed to the Resources portfolio.
When Scott Morrison intervened to stop a contentious New South Wales gas project last year, he never directly told his deputy prime minister, Michael Mccormack, that he had to have the governor-general appoint him to the Resources portfolio to do so.
The former Nationals leader has clarified what he says occurred in early
2021 amid concern within the Morrison government about the political implications of letting the proposed PEP11 development off the NSW Central Coast proceed. The then Resources minister and Queensland Nationals member of parliament, Keith Pitt, had been inclined to approve the project, which required a joint decision with the NSW government. But using powers few knew he had acquired, Morrison stepped in late last year and overruled Pitt.
Mccormack has said when the three men met to discuss PEP11 in the weeks before the secret appointment, Morrison flagged that he could overrule Pitt and make the final decision. Now, Mccormack has confirmed that Morrison did not mention this would involve seeking special vice-regal authorisation to effectively become a cominister in the portfolio. Rather, Mccormack says both men assumed Morrison was suggesting that, as prime minister, he had the authority to do what he was proposing.
“Scott had said he could be a signatory for this decision should the need arise,” Mccormack tells The Saturday Paper. “I didn’t realise – and I don’t think Keith did either – that he was going to get himself sworn into the portfolio.”
Governor-general David Hurley appointed Morrison to administer the Resources portfolio on April 15, 2021. This appointment was kept secret, along with two
“We were just shooting ourselves in the foot. There was just this fear that we were going to have these exploration rigs up and down the coast.”
from the year before and two subsequently.
Morrison’s move to have himself appointed to five extra portfolios only became public in August this year, as a result of the publication of a book, Plagued, on his government’s handling of the pandemic.
Mccormack says he knew about the first appointment, to minister Greg Hunt’s Health portfolio in March 2020, but not others, although he says Morrison hinted at his plan.
“I recall the PM taking over from Greg Hunt because Greg was going to miss a couple of important meetings,” Mccormack says. “At one point he [the prime minister] said, ‘Well, I may need to sign myself in to other portfolios as the need arises.’ Nobody batted an eyelid. It was a crazy time.”
Asked in August this year when he first knew about the then prime minister’s secret Resources appointment, Pitt mentioned having discussions with Morrison and Mccormack during 2021. Pitt’s comments were interpreted as suggesting Morrison had directly informed him and probably also Mccormack.
This week, Mccormack says that Morrison told the two men he was able to step in as the prime minister, not that he would need special extra powers.
“I didn’t realise the PM had actually signed himself in [to the portfolio],” Mccormack tells The Saturday Paper.
“I didn’t realise until a long time after I was the deputy PM.”
Barnaby Joyce replaced Mccormack as Nationals leader and deputy prime minister on June 21, 2021. It seems Pitt also believed – two months later – that he remained the responsible minister and final decision-maker.
In an August 31, 2021, response letter to a concerned shareholder, seen by The Saturday Paper, Pitt’s senior adviser wrote that the minister was “currently considering this matter as the final decision-maker”. Pitt was overseas when The Saturday Paper contacted him this week, and said he was unable to comment due to legal proceedings relating to PEP11 that are under way in the Federal Court.
Even when Morrison moved to block the PEP11 development in December, and finalised it just ahead of this year’s election, Mccormack says he had no direct explanation of the mechanism Morrison had used.
Mccormack’s comments follow revelations last week from officials in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources that Morrison did nothing on the issue for eight months after his unannounced appointment. When he finally moved to make the decision, the department sought its own legal advice as to whether his position was lawful.
The departmental evidence has prompted new questions about when and how Morrison, his office and his department communicated details of the unprecedented secret appointments. Former High Court judge Virginia Bell is investigating the sequence of events and is due to hand her report to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese by November 25.
Departmental secretary Meghan Quinn told last week’s estimates hearings that an unnamed senior departmental official had taken a phone call from an unnamed counterpart in the Department of the Prime
Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) on April 21 last year – now known to be six days after the appointment – informing the department that Morrison had the power to administer the portfolio.
Before his Resources appointment, Morrison had called a meeting with Mccormack and Pitt to discuss PEP11. Pitt had made clear his intention to approve it. On February 12, he issued a news release to media in the Newcastle and Hunter Valley region, hosing down speculation that a decision was coming that day, but fuelling expectations of an approval. Pitt’s statement said he had not yet received the requisite advice from his state counterpart.
“I will give this proposal the detailed consideration it deserves, taking into account all relevant facts and advice …” Pitt’s statement said. “I appreciate the strong community interest in the issue but am concerned about some of the exaggerated claims being made by groups who are opposed to the permit.”
“Rigs will not be popping up off Sydney Harbour and surfers will not be dodging them trying to catch waves,” the statement said, adding that he believed the offshore petroleum industry was responsible and safe and created jobs, wealth and energy security for all Australians.
Morrison had a different view of the gas project. Mccormack says the meeting with Morrison and Pitt occurred in the weeks after that, and before the April 15 appointment. There were robust discussions. He says he could see where both men were coming from. In the interim, the then NSW minister, John Barilaro, had written to Pitt saying his government wanted to oppose the project. That helped sway Mccormack.
“He said he wasn’t going to do it,” Mccormack says of Barilaro. “I thought, ‘Why would we do it?’… It would’ve caused uproar from Dobell down to Mackellar … We were just shooting ourselves in the foot. There was just this fear that we were going to have these exploration rigs up and down the coast. That was the fear by people in those suburbs
... It would have led to the biggest campaign against us.”
Pitt had another PEP11 meeting with Morrison on April 21 last year, according to Mccormack – the day the PM&C officials called the Resources department. At that meeting, Mccormack says it was made clear that “the PM could make the call and was willing to make the call on this decision”.
“Keith had walked into my office, just sort of shrugged his shoulders – we just moved on,” Mccormack says. “As I understood, it had sorted itself out … I think Keith was very much of the understanding that the PM could and would make the PEP11 decision if he felt he needed to. He made it quite clear to us both that should the need arise, he had the power to make that decision.”
In the first of two estimates hearings last week, the senate economics committee heard on Tuesday that the Resources department had had no further contact from the prime minister’s office in relation to Morrison’s Resources portfolio authority until December 8, when it requested a special briefing for him on PEP11.
Quinn reported that officials from the two departments had met, and there had been an “explanation” and “exchanges of information including official documents”. Appointed secretary this year, she was not in the department at the time.
In the Thursday night hearing,
Quinn revealed that the department took its own steps to check “the legal veracity of providing advice to a minister sworn to the portfolio for the purposes of making an administrative decision”.
“There were subsequent processes to establish the legal position of the swearingin,” she said.
Under questioning from Labor senator Deborah O’neill, Quinn made a distinction between knowing on April 21 that Morrison had been appointed and knowing on December 8 that he had been “sworn in” and would be the decision-maker on PEP11.
Morrison was appointed by a letter of instrument and was not required to take an oath. The department’s advice was that the move was lawful, so it provided the briefing on December 10, the first Morrison had received on the issue.
Six days later, Morrison instructed the joint federal-state authority responsible for managing resource exploration applications, the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator, to notify the development applicant, Asset Energy, that the federal government concurred with NSW and intended to refuse its request.
Asset Energy had applied to extend an expiring gas exploration permit. The environmental campaign against the project was strong and Morrison was concerned about vulnerable Liberal-held coastal seats. His MPS in those seats, including his close friend Lucy Wicks in Robertson, were against it. The same day that the refusal notice was sent – December 16 – he issued a press release jointly with Wicks and the other affected Liberals, and held a news conference in her electorate. “This project will not proceed on our watch,” he said.
Explaining his decision to Nine Radio on August 16 this year, Morrison said he had himself appointed because of the “importance” of the PEP11 decision.
“We’d discussed the issue,” he said of himself and Pitt. “But I’d always respected Keith’s role as the decision-maker, and if I wished to be the decision-maker, then I had to take the steps that I took. I had to follow a very meticulous process in informing myself about the issue … and then making a decision in accordance with all the legal requirements, which I did.”
Asset Energy is now challenging that process in the Federal Court, arguing it was not afforded procedural fairness. It is also challenging the constitutionality of Morrison’s appointment.
When the five secret appointments became public in August this year, Pitt was asked on ABC TV’S Q+A when he knew about the resources appointment and whether he had informed his leader, Michael Mccormack. Pitt avoided answering directly, saying only that he found out “somewhere in 2021”.
“We had a number of discussions over a long period of time … It may have occurred in a meeting that Michael was at with all of us, including the PM and his representatives, or it may have been a separate discussion ...”
When presenter Stan Grant asked pointedly if Pitt had told Mccormack that the prime minister had sworn himself into the Resources portfolio, Pitt replied: “My recollection was that he may well have been in the room when we had a previous discussion with the PM.”
Mccormack says Morrison told neither of them directly in his presence.
Morrison has apologised to colleagues for withholding information, but not for the PEP11 decision – the only one in which he sought to use the acquired powers. He told Nine Radio in August: “If I hadn’t personally considered that issue, then how could I look the people of Newcastle and the Central Coast and the Northern Beaches in the eye and say, ‘I’ve done everything I could.’ ”
Mccormack sympathises with
Morrison, both on the politics and on the decision to intervene. “… We don’t live in a dictatorship but there is an element of a final decision – the buck stops with the person in The Lodge.”
He says through those first two pandemic years, big decisions had to be made quickly because there were “a lot of important things going on”.
“I don’t want his legacy as the prime minister trashed because I know the effort he went to and the commitment he made to keep people alive and keep livelihoods going through Covid-19,” Mccormack says. “It was a devastating time for many people right across Australia and I know the work Scott Morrison put in at the time.”