Anthony Albanese is preparing to wade through the entrails of Scott Morrison’s government and use the parliament to put the blowtorch on his predecessor’s management of the pandemic.
The Prime Minister is unlikely to pursue a royal commission but will use other tools to relive mistakes and pile pressure on the Coalition over its handling of Covid-19.
Senior Coalition figures are bracing for a rough few months as Labor probes decisions made by Morrison, following revelations he secretly appointed himself as health, finance and resources minister alongside Greg Hunt, Mathias Cormann and Keith Pitt.
Some in Liberal Party ranks say Morrison is being unfairly maligned, arguing the former prime minister was forced to make unprecedented decisions on the run because they were in the best interests of the country.
But others, led by Nationals MPs, claim they were left in the dark by Morrison’s ministerial appointments, which under the Constitution are legal. They say Morrison should have publicly disclosed the administrative changes signed-off by Governor-General David Hurley.
In the new book Plagued, written by myself and Simon Benson, Morrison defends his move to appoint himself as joint health and finance minister alongside Hunt and Cormann at the height of the pandemic in March 2020.
The temporary appointments came after he invoked for the first time far-reaching biosecurity laws and as the former government unleashed the largest fiscal stimulus in the nation’s history.
Albanese, who on Monday accused Morrison of trashing Australia’s Westminster system of government, is expected to go after the former prime minister’s self-appointment as resources minister.
Morrison, who claimed powers over the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources in April last year, used the authority to overrule Pitt, who had gone rogue on an offshore gas project off Newcastle.
Over the next 11 months, and under pressure from Liberal MPs, environmentalists and community groups from North Sydney to Newcastle, Morrison used his powers to block the PEP-11 licence despite advice that Asset Energy’s application be approved.
Resources Minister Madeleine King and Albanese, who raised his own concerns about the PEP-11 project during the campaign, have time to consider future actions, with the Federal Court not expected to make its final decision on the case brought by Asset Energy until early next year.
The Albanese government will come under pressure from teal independents, the Greens and others to launch a substantive inquiry into the former government, which many would view as a political witch-hunt.
The form of the investigation – and whether the government pursues matters under a new federal integrity commission, through Senate estimates or via other tools – will determine whether Albanese wants to elevate the retrospective probe as a dominant feature of his early time in office.
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