Scott Morrison – a man for all reasons
The revelation that the then Prime Minister decided he needed to create a duopoly of ministerial positions surprised many. For me, it was totality unsurprising. If anything, it vindicated all I (and others) have written about Scott Morrison on The AIMN, even long before he was Prime Minister
He carries his lack of transparency like a fortress against those seeking truth. At his press conference last Wednesday, he revealed his reasons for taking over the five ministerial roles.
The first was a fear that ministers in question might become ill from COVID-19. That’s not in question. The Westminster system allows acting ministers to be appointed, but even our security agencies weren’t aware that there were duplicate ministers.
The second was that he couldn’t trust the ministers not to act unilaterally against the national interest. This begs the question of why they would be appointed in the first place. All the ministers involved held special powers granted by acts of Parliament. His words bite and are worthy of special consideration.
He said he feared “some threat to the national interest.”
His final reason, indeed the most astonishing, was that he felt that he was the only Australian capable of handling the problem but needed to have the power to override his ministers. So, in concert with the Governor General, he was given this power. And in secret.
These actions reveal a man of the most humongous personality. One who was prepared to bypass “the doctrine of responsible government” was unable to trust his ministers, unable to convey the truth to them and the Australian people.
If we are to save our democracy, we might begin by asking that, at the very least, our politicians should be transparent and tell the truth.
During his time as Immigration Minister to Treasurer and Prime Minister, his need for secrecy was paramount. The Auditor General’s report into access to FOI documents shut down debate in Parliament; on water matters, MPs expenses etc.
Listening to Scott Morrison trying to defend his actions at the press conference, one could not escape two points. One, his history of lying, and two, his account of transparency. On these two points, one could only conclude that he was unconvincing, and you couldn’t trust him as far as you could throw him. That he thought he was the only Australian with the knowledge and skills to manage us through the COVID-19 pandemic reveals Messianic sentiments on the part of Morrison.
This Governments performance over its time in office has been like a daily shower of offensiveness raining down on society. Surely performance or lack of it must mean something.
He duplicated the Resources Minister, Treasure, Health Minister, Finance and Home Affairs Minister to gain more power. An unfettered power that would override that of his appointed ministers. Why? One example is that he quietly swore himself in as a second resources minister and used the ability to kill off a coastal gas project that then-resources minister Keith Pitt overwhelmingly supported.
Enquiries might conclude that no laws have been broken, but importantly conventions have, and no adequate answers have been forthcoming.
Hunt understood he was in a power-sharing arrangement. The resources minister didn’t have a clue. Mathias Cormann, Finance Minister, didn’t know he was sharing his role.
Keith Pitt was in the dark that he was sharing the resources ministry with the prime Minister. “I certainly found it unusual“, Pitt said upon learning of the move.
If the Governor General secretly swore-in a Prime Minister to side-hustle Ministries, and the same Prime Minister promised $18 million to a pop-up charity supported by the Governor General that had no office, history, or plan, what time is the GG resigning?
— Kaz Cooke (@reallykazcooke) August 15, 2022
Morrison was secretly Home Affairs Minister for a whole year. This means he administered the ASIO Act, the AFP Act, the ABF Act and the Surveillance Devices Act, among many others. What did he do with this extraordinary power, and when. Full disclosure please, and now.
— Nick McKim (@NickMcKim) August 16, 2022
Trying to understand what makes a man do these extraordinary and unprecedented things is a phycological nightmare, and my best guess tells me its origins lay in religion. I can assure the reader that the adherents of scripture do believe them. Passionately enough to take them literally.
Below are four Bible scriptures that deal with power:
Corinthians 2:5 That your faith might not rest in men’s wisdom but in God’s power.
Romans 13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. There is no authority except God, who has instituted those that exist.
Corinthians 4:20 For God’s kingdom does not consist of talk but power.
Ephesians 3:20 Now to him who can do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power within us.
With the loss of the election, one can assume that Morrison would have sought solace in prayer, scripture reading and meditation. There is plenty in the book to prop up your failures and move on. It cannot be overstated just how seriously adherents of Biblical Pentecostal teaching take it.
Why did he do all this duplication of ministries? Was it just for additional power? Was he genuinely concerned about the pandemic and the capabilities he may need?
But even that doesn’t make sense, given that our Constitution covers those contingencies.
The rise of narcissism and inequality and the demise of compassion illustrate the state of the world.
Even the secrecy the Prime Minister employed to arrange his duplication of the five ministries has MPs worried, and the Governor Generals’ involvement is under a constitutional cloud.
The press conference itself was just the oddest thing; Morrison was full of resentment, lacking a scintilla of remorse and full of inconsistencies.
The authors of the book in question owe some explanation as to why they kept these matters a secret for two years.
What was the Governor General’s involvement in this sleazy affair? His only obligation would have been to warn the Prime Minister if he concluded that Morrison was making the appointments secret.
What part did Phil Gaetjens, Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, play in this sordid affair? We don’t know.
When the final curtain comes down on Scott Morrison’s political career, he will be described as an unaccountable, unapologetic, unchristian politician who became an MP using dubious pre-selection tactics. It will be said of him that he was a narcissistic fast-talking man filled with self-absorbency and little more.
He understood little of leadership, and many have judged him to be the worst on a long list of Prime Ministers. He achieved nothing and was eventually replaced by a man who appreciated the workings of a true democracy.
My thought for the day
The right to vote is the gift that democracy gives. Suppose a political party is not transparent in supplying all the information necessary to exercise this right. It is destroying the democracy that enables it to exist.
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25 comments
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John Lord -
New England Cocky -
Kaye Lee -
leefe -
John Lord -
Kaye Lee -
Kerri -
Phil Pryor -
Phil -
Harry Lime -
Michael Taylor -
Bob -
Kaye Lee -
Ross -
Kaye Lee -
Phil Pryor -
Albos Elbow -
Albos Elbow -
Pete Petrass -
Kerri -
Lambchop Simnel -
Terence Mills -
Harry Lime -
Geoff Andrews -
Geoff Andrews
Return to home page“I, as prime minister, was responsible for pretty much for every single thing that was going on, every drop of rain, every strain of the virus, everything that occurred over that period of time”.
JL You have long identified the too many failings of the lamentable, unChristian, devious, lying Scummo. However, from an extensive long reading of world politics I think that Australian voters dodged a much more serious future bullet when Scummo was sacked in May 2022.
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As noted by others elsewhere on AIMN, the messianic tendencies exhibited by Scummo, his about $43 MILLION gift of taxpayer’s funds to the ”buy a career & forgiveness now” with the Hell$inger$ Cult and very flexible distortion of facts to suit his objectives at that time, may indicate the choice of the secret Ministries may have more to do with the stated or implied unlimited political power that various legislation offered each of them respectively.
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Just think ….. Scummo the Dictator of Australia ….. all done legally by following the legislation given Royal Assent by Betty Windsor, of the most dysfunctional family in Europe, by none other than her Governor General!!!
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The unChristian dream is fulfilled!! The eagle has landed!! Scummo has become his own Messiah!!
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Now what was that about $18 MILLION gift that the Future Leader’s Foundation Ltd based in England that GG David Hurley witnessed??
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NOW is the time for all good persons to stand up and be counted for the Australian Republic having an Australian borne Head of State.
You left out his stint as Social Services Minister.
In April 2015, measures to create budgetary savings by increasing the pursuit of outstanding debts and investigation of cases of fraud in the Australian welfare system were first flagged by the Minister for Social Services Scott Morrison and the Minister for Human Services Marise Payne, and formally announced by the Abbott Government in the 2015 Australian federal budget
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-12/federal-government-to-cut-$1.6-billion-from-welfare/6464320?nw=0&r=HtmlFragment
During May 2015, Morrison promoted his plan for a $3.5 billion overhaul of the childcare subsidies system. His substantial advertising efforts led to claims that he was overshadowing the role of Treasurer Joe Hockey. Mr Morrison insisted he did not want Mr Hockey’s job, and he wasn’t angling to be prime minister.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/social-services-minister-scott-morrison-dismisses-claims-hes-overshadowing-treasurer-joe-hockey-on-budget-eve/news-story/5c24b0264ed6431c5aa7b4b92b2d13b5
I am always highly reluctant to ascribe to mental illness that which can be adequately explained by greed, arrogance, entitlement and ignorance, but I think in ScoMoFo’s case, there genuinely is an element of instability there. He sounds more and more unhinged every time we hear from him.
Kaye. He also changed the way in which rises to pensions are calculated.
Yes John. First he tried to link pension increases to inflation rather than the more generous average male weekly earnings but that was blocked in the Senate. So then he tightened the assets test instead, leading to around 91,000 people losing access to the part-pension and 236,000 people having their pensions decreased.
He also cut government paid parental leave to women who already had workplace entitlements claiming it was “double dipping”.
I question how he overrode Pitt? (Other than Pitt’s compliance)
In a case of two Ministers who has seniority??
It would have been interesting to see Pitt challenge Morrison’s usurping his authority?
Imagine if one saw an image, a classic type of Painting, Leonardo-like, of a Great man, sitting at the right hand of his god (a huge blob, yet to be shaped) and as you touched the painting, pigment scrapes and shards fell, like peeled sunburnt skin, covering the floor and leaving the observer with nothing but a memory of a puzzling hint of contrived immortality. So near…
I agree totally with your concern about the lack of transparency and unsupported power grab, and general assessment of Scott Morrison’s career. However I continue to be disappointed by the repeated side swings at Christians in general. Although as you demonstrated it’s possible to find biblical verses to pull out of context and support just about anything, this isn’t considered best practice by most who try to live consistently with biblical guidance. But I do realise thst you’re “preaching to the choir” 😁
Excellent editorial in today’s Saturday Paper…nicely eviscerating the total nothing that is Morrison.
In 2014 they also cancelled the pensioner energy supplement (about $100 a fortnight) and the education supplement for people on the Disability Support Pension.
John, 1st thought – Morrison is delusional.
2nd thought – “pretty much” after “responsible” weakens the statement to the point of farce.
3rd thought – he knows, or at least suspects, what is going on (with both floods and the ‘virus’ and is being honest in a way).
Similarly in Feb 2022 the QLD Premier made a Freudian slip on the topic of “rain-bombs” (Emergency Update) ie “This is Mother Nature. I can’t control Mother Nature, the people of this state can’t control Mother Nature, and sometimes they throw stuff at us and we’ve got to deal with it.” That is the first time I’ve ever heard a person label Mother Nature as “they”. She knows.
FEMA – How to Profit from Catastrophe 2018:
“The agency is soon expected to issue the National Flood Insurance Program’s first-ever catastrophe bond, a means of reinsurance offered by risk-savvy investors willing to bet on the probability of extreme calamities in exchange for above-market returns.”
I give Albo a free pass on all of this, he seems to be outside the loop. Nigel Farage will more to say on that topic in Sept 2022.
Interesting bit in that Saturday Paper article….
Ministerial changes are normally published on the Federal Register of Legislation but haven’t been updated since February 2020 – a month before the saga began.
When The Saturday Paper asked the prime minister’s department this week why updates hadn’t been published, it replied “no comment”.
And we thought we had heard the last of Scott Morrison. But no there was one final fiasco, one last debacle, one last scandal left as a parting gift from our worst ever Prime Minister, Scotty from Marketing.
As scandals, or more correctly rorts, go this is a real beaut.
Five ministerial salaries, for little or no effort, on top of what a PM gets, a nice little money earner.
Wonder who thought that one up? Morrison is not smart enough to think of it himself.
Some Liberal staffer must have ended up with an extremely well paid long term role as an overseas trade mission head as reward.
Then you have to wonder how many other politicians and prominent VIP’s are getting that cold icy feeling up the spine as this scandal expands into otherwise unforeseen directions, as it surely will.
Ross, apparently he didn’t get any extra money.
The bit that really pisses me off is when he said “You’re standing on the shore in the middle of a pandemic. I was steering the ship in the middle of the tempest.”
Actually, the nurses and ambos and cleaners and teachers and parents and shelf stackers and delivery drivers were steering the ship. The man who doesn’t hold a hose was too busy admiring his crowns and telling us all, as our elderly relatives dropped like flies, that it wasn’t a race. I don’t think that was a rudder that Scott had his hand on.
Onanistic oneupyourselfishness; raving ratbaggery; selfcentred selfbuggeration; delusional delirious deja vu; manic meatmanipulation; autoerotic oscillation. Scott Brown-Crevice, our late and not lamented departed P M, a Pustular Misfit.
Even the Governor general is corrupt.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-20/scott-morrison-appointments-not-found-reports-about-governor-gen/101351660
Maybe all conservatives are corrupt, greedy liars.
No wonder Scummo wanted total control over government ministers decisions.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-had-final-say-on-828-million-in-industry-grants-20220819-p5bbbo.html
How much of the $828 million ended up in Scummo’s back pocket.
Why is this scumbag still allowed to be anywhere near the Federal parliament.
He must be the first person to be investigated by a federal ICAC and to be dealt with with the full force of our laws.
There are numerous questions I have about this.
1. Will anybody keep a track on the $18 million to Hurley’s pop-up charity to see just where the money ends up???
2. Apparently Bridget McKenzie is screwing one of the authors of the book about Scummo’s handling of the pandemic………….yet she was up in arms claiming she knew nothing about it and Scummo should resign???
3. Will there be an audit of the 5 Ministries to see what else Scummo has been up to???
4. Why were none of Scummo’s Ministerial appointments listed in the GGs diary???
5. Following his prior sackings from Tourism NZ and NSW where is all the paperwork as to why, was he paid out his full entitlements, why wasn’t he charged wih anything??? Just how does he manage to be so corrupt and also manage to cover everything up???
6. The 2020 grant of $42 million to Hillsong???
I am sure there are many more
Pete Petrass I have an answer to your question about McKenzie hating on Morrison? When you have a book to sell any form of publicity is worth it. These people would eat their own children.
And yes! Enough of this secrecy BS. If we paid for ScoMo to be head of tourism we deserve an explanation for his sacking.
Last couple of commenters have it right. Let’s hope there is a fairly thorough inventory taken, since we are of the Mushroom Club, kept in the dark and fed on bullshit, on t he thngs most relevent, which was always their goal in the first place
To find out the real answers we’d have to get the truth out of Five Eyes and Asio, the TNC’s and the rest of the gobal apparatus as currently constituted. Is the system designed to allow prominence for people like Trump, Morrison and Johnson?
Labor is there for when the truth has fallen apart and no fig leaf remains and is equally dispensible, as we have seen over long times.
Thing is, everything he and others have done has done has had at back the Abbott-like screwing over of social spending and discrediting of justice and democratic government, quite obviouis pattern since his earlier days with immigration, then social security. He is the IPA soldier extraordinary. And nor was Turnbull exempt as to it, it was Turnbull who remarked that cuts to the ABC represented an “efficiency dividend”. Much of what goes wrong, I suspect, down to the secretive FTA’s which also follow the IPA plan.
The Solicitor General has confirmed that what Morrison did was not unlawful.
We know that our parliamentary arrangements are governed by the Constitution, by legislation and, importantly, by conventions. A convention is an unwritten rule, not a law. It is an accepted way of doing something. The Westminster parliamentary system is built around these kinds of unwritten rules.
Morrison chose to bypass conventions and then keep it secret without telling his Cabinet colleagues, the individual ministers that he had usurped, the parliament or the people of Australia.
That under our system of government is astounding and potentially subverts and undermines our democracy. We must ensure that this never happens again and we must ask questions of the all those who facilitated Morrison’s deception.
Terence, we could start by asking tourism Australia and their Tourism cousins in new Zealand why Shithead Morrison managed to piss everyone off.The prick has well documented form,and well before he shafted his way into our Parliament.Which begs the question..why did the Liberal Party allow this toxic piece of shit into their ranks?Are they all just stupid,or were they all just along for the self interested ride?Some good karma going on here,because the old ‘broad church’ is now a steaming pile of shit.
Youse communists can’t sneer at Scott’s talents as a PR consultant when he can come up with the phrase “efficiency dividend “ to describe cuts to ABC funding. It’s brilliant!
I would even dare to describe it as the apogee of his political career.
You can’t deny THAT, you wineing, Chardonnay guzzlers.