OPINION: Before the Coalition starts complaining that any inquiry into Scott Morrison’s ministries would be overtly political, it need only consider its own behaviour after coming into government in 2013.
As the constitutional lawyers predicted, the solicitor-general, whose own advice in March 2020 facilitated the mechanism that Scott Morrison used to duplicate five portfolios,But Stephen Donaghue, QC, raised sufficient concerns about the secret behaviour to enable Anthony Albanese to confirm there would be a standalone inquiry, possibly a royal commission or judicial review, into what occurred between March 2020 and May last year.
Morrison promised last week during his press conference to participate in any “positive process” rather than a show trial, and a properly constructed review will make it hard for him to refuse. Both were political, especially the latter which was headed by Dyson Heydon, QC, who declined to recuse himself even whenBetween them, the two commissions publicly interrogated former Labor prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd to little avail, and sought to humiliate and damage the then-leader Bill Shorten.
Albanese offered wistfully that there may be “a range of other implications” that were not in the bailiwick of the solicitor-general’s advice.
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