PM cuts COAG for National Cabinet

PRIME Minister Scott Morrison has dumped the lumbering Council of Australian Governments in favour of the more limber National Cabinet.

He’ll now hold monthly meetings with premiers and chief ministers, hoping to capture the goodwill and free flow of ideas they previously had mostly over dinner the night before formal gatherings.

“Having the groups operate like a fair-dinkum cabinet has been really important,” Mr Morrison said.

National Cabinet was established in March to bring political leaders together to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

The COAG process has been criticised as too cumbersome and its meetings had become infrequent and irregular in recent years.

“COAG is no more,” Mr Morrison said.

The National Cabinet will continue to meet fortnightly during the pandemic before moving to a monthly schedule in the post-virus period.

Most will be held via videoconference while face-to-face meetings will occur twice yearly.

Mr Morrison said the agenda would focus on jobs.

A key reform will be giving the treasurers responsibility over national partnership agreements which cover billions of dollars in funding for services.

There will also be a series of ministerial groups to focus on specific issues such as rural and regional matters, skills, energy, housing, transport and infrastructure, population and migration and health.

Many other ministerial councils that exist now will be re-examined and Mr Morrison expects many will no longer be required.

“It’s important that ministers at state and federal level talk to each other but they don’t have to do it in such a bureaucratic form with a whole bunch of paperwork attached to it,” he said. “We want to streamline all of those endless meetings that go on.”

Asked whether it would reduce the transparency of government decisions by putting more discussions behind closed doors, Mr Morrison said policymaking should not be a “spectator sport”.

Previously, there was a lot of theatre and too many people in the room led to leaks being more likely, he said.

“It’s a serious policy deliberation which needs to be done between governments and by cabinet members within cabinets and it’s applying the same disciplines and the same opportunities,” he said. “What matters is the outcome. What matters is the services. What matters is the hospital beds and the schools and the funding and support and the targeting and the performance measurement and the accountability.”

The National Cabinet operates under the same rules as the Federal Cabinet, meaning secrecy provisions apply and records will be sealed for 20 years.