Andrew Bolt: Canberra cheap shots just pure revenge on Scott Morrison
At a time when Australia is crying out for unity, the Albanese government has used its power to humiliate fallen prime minister Scott Morrison.
Andrew Bolt
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The ugliest American politics came to Canberra on Wednesday when the Albanese government used its power to humiliate a fallen prime minister.
Shame on Labor. This was victor’s justice, passing a censure motion against Scott Morrison. It was pure revenge.
Sure, the Liberals set the precedent with one of the Abbott government’s worst decisions – creating a royal commission into the Rudd Labor government’s free insulation disaster, dragging in the beaten Kevin Rudd to explain how four people had died.
The former prime minister had to explain, in fact, what everyone already knew about a scheme for which he’d already been held accountable by voters.
I warned then that the Liberals would pay for that show trial, and that time has come. Morrison was damned in Wednesday’s cheap-shot censure motion for secretly making himself a minister of five portfolios that already had one when he was prime minister.
For that arrogance, Morrison has already been smashed in the media – including by me – and disowned by his colleagues. He was also criticised by a former judge the Albanese government brought in to say what everyone had already said about Morrison’s power trip.
What Morrison did at the time was legal but that loophole – secretly appointing ministers without telling parliament – is now being closed, and Morrison’s finished as a political player.
So what more could this censure motion achieve other than embarrass the Liberals by forcing them to vote against this over-the-top retribution?
And how does this help voters?
I said this was American politics come to Canberra, even though the Liberals set the precedent.
That’s because I’m sure Labor looked more to how US Democrats used their power in office to smash Republican Donald Trump, beaten at the last election but still a threat in the next.
How squalid it’s been. Democrats launched two investigations in New York into the former president’s finances, and a third into Trump taking home secret documents.
The Democrats have also run a show trial over a protest by Trump supporters who broke into Congress in January last year. A Democrat attorney-general in Georgia is meanwhile investigating Trump for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election count.
It’s all helped set Americans at each other’s throats and made justice seem just another name for vengeance. Each overreach just gives the other side an excuse to do the same.
Is that what we want in Australia, too? Aren’t we crying for unity instead?
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Canberra cheap shots just pure revenge on Scott Morrison