Labor forces Scott Morrison’s hand on integrity

Scott Morrison has put his integrity on the line in a fight with Anthony Albanese. What was a minor and little-understood political mistake has turned into a full-blown test of leadership.

Whether the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader win will ­depend on the integrity of Energy Minister Angus Taylor and the NSW Police Force’s view of that ­integrity.

For the moment, Morrison is standing up to Labor’s attack, sticking by his minister, demonstrating loyalty, implementing the ministerial code as he sees it, following process with the police and pushing the Coalition’s agenda in the Senate.

But should there be an adverse finding by the police against Taylor based on a complaint from Labor’s legal affairs spokesman, Mark Dreyfus, Morrison has the option of dumping him.

Taylor’s fate depends on what he has done and what police find. Of course, Labor wants to handcuff Morrison to Taylor to taint his judgment and integrity.

Parliament has this week been all about integrity: integrity of Westpac. Integrity of the CFMEU. Integrity of Taylor. Integrity of Morrison.

Of course, it’s really been about the politics of integrity. The government is intent on passing its new laws on enforcing integrity of registered organisations — greater control of the unions — through the Senate. Labor is intent on blocking it.

Labor used the reprehensible behaviour of Westpac to blunt the Coalition’s claims on the need for action against unions. The government used the reprehensible ­behaviour of rogue unions to blunt the ALP’s claims that mistakes involving “paperwork” could lead to deregistration.

Labor understandably wants credit for championing a royal commission into banking, to portray Morrison as not being tough enough on banks and to leverage the Westpac scandal to defeat the Coalition’s “union-busting” laws in the Senate.

Labor Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers said: “In a week when the Morrison government’s highest priority is to pick on workers and unions, it beggars belief that, for so long now, the Morrison government has gone soft on the banks, resisted a banking royal commission, voted against it 26 times.”

Chalmers’s argument is: “Scott Morrison thinks that a union making three mistakes on their paperwork is a bigger threat to Australia than 23 million breaches of the law by one of the big four banks.”

Attorney-General Christian Porter responded to the “paperwork” claims by listing convictions for unionists involving drug dealing, bullying and threatening police to destroy the moral equivalence argument. The revelation police were to conduct an inquiry into the Labor complaint about Taylor gave Labor the upper hand and forced Morrison to act.