Opinion: What the governor-general should have asked the minister for everything
Scott Morrison has managed to create yet another political storm for himself and the Liberal Party – and in the process drag the governor-general and his office into it.
The governor-general is required to act on advice of the government in making ministerial appointments. But that does not mean that he has to do so immediately – without first asking a few hard questions. And it is one of many reasons I am a proud advocate of shared leadership models: as my own experience at UNSW attests, they help build in excess capacity to cover illness and emergencies.
But the federal cabinet, and the ministers involved, could not wait to be told. The whole idea of responsible government is that it is a system based on a collective process of deliberation , and individual ministerial responsibility . The question this raises is what, if anything, we could have done to prevent this, or how we might prevent it in the future.The High Court could potentially provide some check. In the UK, the Supreme Court invalidated the prorogation of parliament in the lead up to Brexit, essentially on the basis that former prime minister Boris Johnson improperly advised the Queen in this context.
This is one reason shared leadership models need to be carefully designed, clearly communicated and continually reviewed.
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