A Liberal MP says Scott Morrison needs to consider his position in parliament and has backed a wider inquiry that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is contemplating into his predecessor’s secret multiple ministerial portfolios.
Albanese is on Monday receiving advice from the solicitor-general on the legality of Morrison’s move to have the governor-general appoint him to administer the departments of several of his senior ministers in 2020 and 2021.
Liberal MP Bridget Archer says there should be a broad inquiry into how and why Scott Morrison secretly took on additional ministerial responsibilities.Credit:James Brickwood
These included health, finance, home affairs, treasury and industry, science, energy and resources.
The Liberal member for Bass in Tasmania, Bridget Archer, says there should be a broader examination of how and why this happened and the secrecy around it, and any inquiry should encompass the role of Governor-General David Hurley and the public service.
“The wider issue is around the conduct and how has this conduct been allowed to occur. Is it something that we want to see be able to be carried out at some point in the future or do we need to examine that going forward?” she said on ABC’s Radio National on Monday.
“People want trust and confidence in public officials, in elected officials. They just want to know that when decisions are made, that they can have faith in those decisions and that requires a level of transparency and accountability that we haven’t seen in this case.”
Albanese said on Sunday there was clearly a need for proper scrutiny of what had occurred, with questions about the functioning of democracy and the conventions of accountability to parliament separate from what the solicitor-general was looking at.
Speaker Milton Dick is also considering a request from the Greens to refer Morrison to the privileges committee, which can examine whether he misled parliament or if his actions were in contempt.
Former home affairs minister Karen Andrews, who was unaware until last week that Morrison had added himself to the people allowed to administer her department, has called for the former prime minister to quit parliament.
Archer didn’t go that far but said he should consider whether it was still right for him to be there.
Barnaby Joyce, who was deputy prime minister when Morrison used his powers over the resources department to knock back an offshore oil and gas project, said while he did not agree with what happened, nothing illegal had occurred.
“I don’t believe you start kicking people out of parliament if they didn’t do anything illegal,” he told Network Seven on Monday.
“Otherwise, we create a precedent where in the future … we’re just on the Scott Morrison precedent, ‘We don’t like what you did, so you also have to leave’. It’s stupid.”
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