Scott Morrison did far worse to us during Covid than take on too many portfolios
Some free advice, Albo: Yes, Scott Morrison’s multiple ministry grab is odd but your carry-on is becoming unseemly. You slayed the beast, now stop flogging a dead horse writes James Morrow.
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A little free advice for Anthony Albanese, for what it’s worth.
You’ve slayed the beast.
Killed the dragon.
Driven a stake through the heart of the vampire.
And if we can keep going with the metaphors and turns of phrase, it’s time to stop beating a dead horse.
Yes, absolutely, there is something very odd indeed about the weird and seemingly dead of night ministerial arrangements made by your predecessor, Scott Morrison.
As this newspaper went to press the count of extra ministries assumed by the former PM was five, though by the time readers are consuming this column with their Wednesday morning flat whites and ham and cheese croissants that figure might have climbed to half a dozen or more.
The portfolios where the then-PM stuck his nose in included home affairs, treasury, health, finance, and the whole of the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources – all in the name of pandemic preparedness and continuity of government.
Which could sort of be justified if all this happened in the first half of 2020, when Covid was sweeping around the world and no one really knew just how bad it was going to get.
But two of the secret swearings-in took place in May, 2021.
According to Department of Health figures, by then there were just a handful of Covid cases in the nation’s ICUs and hospital beds.
The nation’s vaccine program was also geared up and underway after its slow and rickety start, with the nation closing on one million doses delivered as Mr Morrison was taking over treasury and home affairs.
In short, the odds that ministers were going suddenly start keeling over like passengers on the Wuhan metro in those dodgy videos that did the rounds at the start of the pandemic were longer than winning Powerball.
And no one has given any decent explanation for why these actions, seemingly carried out according to the letter if not the spirit of articles 61 and 64 of the Constitution, were not gazetted.
Given all the other indignities the Morrison government heaped on the citizenry in the name of “keeping Australians safe” – exit visas, anyone? – it’s amazing that the then-prime minister wasn’t shouting about the new arrangements from the rooftops.
Or at least from the podium at a socially distanced press conference in the prime minister’s Parliament House courtyard.
But, all that said, the carry-on being made about all this by the new prime minister is getting unseemly.
It is the behaviour of an opposition leader who has not yet made the proper psychological transition that needs to take place when one stops leading the party room and starts leading the country.
Recent history is littered with examples of this phenomenon.
Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott both struggled with it, in different ways.
Just listen to Prime Minister Albanese, finding his theme on the subject of Mr Morrison’s less than orthodox portfolio arrangements at a press conference Tuesday morning.
“There have been revelations of an extraordinary and unprecedented trashing of our democracy by the former Morrison Government,” he thundered.
“This has been Government by deception. Government in secret. The appointment of not a Shadow ministry by the Leader of the Opposition but a shadow Government by the Prime Minister.”
That was just the start of his opening salvo, which went on for another 680 thundering words.
While there is no doubt that Mr Albanese thinks he is on a winner here, he is fighting the wrong target.
Having won the election, the prime minister should remember his political enemies are on the opposition front bench, not stuck up in a back corner of the House of Representatives.
And given that this remains a fight about something that most people outside of Political World will find somewhat obscure with its talk of gazettes and arrangements and the role of the governor-general, it is hard to imagine that this will have much cut-through.
In short, the Albanese government is burning time and energy fighting the last war when it won on a promise of a more positive style of politics.
On Tuesday Mr Albanese (while refusing to use the phrase “royal commission”) also said that there should be a “proper examination of the circumstances around the handling of the pandemic”.
This would be a far better use of the government’s time, particularly if such an inquiry was free to really go after governments and their responses at all levels, no matter the colour of the party in power.
Perhaps then we might learn why Australia ditched its carefully-prepared pandemic scenarios and instead locked people down according to the best advice of the Chinese Communist Party, closed schools despite the obvious risks to educational attainment and vulnerable children, sent cops to chase sunbakers down in parks despite out in the open being the safest place to be, and encouraged all of us to dob on each other despite supposedly being all in this together.
The great irony is that Australia and the Morrison government, for all its tough talk on China, for at least 18 months followed Beijing’s playbook almost to the letter.
Finding out why might ultimately be a better use of time than working out whether we had too many home affairs ministers for a while.
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Originally published as Scott Morrison did far worse to us during Covid than take on too many portfolios
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