This is a story about power. Power won, used and lost. How power blinded men, silenced sensible voices, and consumed itself. It is the untold story of Scott John Morrison. Told he had been sent by God to save Australians from a great sickness, Morrison turned himself into a kind of one-man government. He wasn’t quite a president, but he wasn’t bound by the conventional institutional constraints on a prime minister either.

The revelations this week that Morrison secretly assumed responsibility for the health, home affairs, resources, finance and treasury portfolios are part of a bigger story. Morrison’s colleagues watched him concentrate power, perhaps more so than any other prime minister in the post-war period. Many were uneasy. With few exceptions, though, they acquiesced to the Morrison show.