Given the passage of 92 pieces of national security legislation since September 11, 2001, the allowance of secret trials, the permissibility of indefinite detention, mandatory metadata retention for up to two years, and raids on journalists, prompting the New York Times to call Australia one of the world’s most secretive liberal democracies, the shadow government revelations of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison are troubling but consistent.
After losing office, Morrison did not shy away from his belief that governments and institutions were imperfect and, for all their intentions, untrustworthy. His own conduct has indicated that very fact: government is not to be trusted. His own effort to acquire control, via stealth, of a number of ministerial portfolios spoke of an acute mistrust of his colleagues and human nature. He was, he claimed in justification, responsible for ‘every drop of rain’.
The most striking note in the tempestuous outrage regarding Morrison’s self-appointment (technically, appointment with the Governor-General’s approval) to five ministerial portfolios other than his own, is the search for the illegal. Such a search is fruitless in a system that thrives on the principle of convention, perennially uncodified and therefore susceptible to breach. It may explain why the criticism has tended to focus on disappointment and outrage: that Morrison’s conduct was ‘sinister’, as former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull put it; or ‘bizarre’, as many have termed it.
A glance at the Australian Constitution reveals a paucity of substance regarding accountable, transparent government. That accountability resides in an understanding about how government and parliament ought to behave, a musty chivalric understanding about good conduct and decency. But there is no mention of the office of prime minister, and no mention of a cabinet, omissions that might encourage the republican sentiments in even the most indifferent of voters. Mention is made of a ‘Federal Executive Office’ that holds office ‘during the pleasure of the Governor-General’, which, in of itself, gives away little.
This spectral form of governance would be considered absurd. And it is. Cobbled together from British and Dominion practice, the term ‘responsible government’ was developed to supplement constitutional documents silent on political practice. From that, such quaint notions as ‘individual ministerial responsibility’ and ‘collective ministerial responsibility’ grew. It was all based on a normative assumption of political conduct, and, for that reason, bound to fail.
'The Morrison affair should do much to invigorate the debate about a republic and the need for clearly stipulated forms