Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
Scott Morrison says he won’t resign from federal parliament after his five secret ministry self-appointments were revealed, defending his decision to stay those ministries concealed because he says he never exercised the powers he had.
At a conference in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon, Morrison struck a defiant tone and said he would remain because the member of Cook, despite growing calls from some even inside his own party for him to quit.
“I believed it had been necessary to possess authority, to own what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations that may be unforeseen, that may enable me to act within the national interests,” he said of his decision to secretly appoint himself to a number of the foremost powerful portfolios within the government.
“I didn’t consider it at the time, given everything else that was happening and therefore the other priorities we were handling, that it had been a matter that needed to be raised at that time.
If I needed to use the powers then I might have disclosed them with the minister.”
The man who signed off on the appointments, the governor, David Hurley, addressed “questions around secrecy” on Wednesday by stating they were matters for the previous Coalition government.
“It isn’t the responsibility of the governor to advise the broader ministry or parliament (or public) of administrative changes of this nature,” a spokesperson said in a very statement.
“The governor had no reason to believe that appointments wouldn’t be communicated.”
Morrison has refused to mention whether the governor asked him to form the appointments public. Morrison said on Wednesday that questions about his behavior were the results of people “not having walked in my shoes”. “You’re standing on the shore after the actual fact,” he said to at least one journalist.
“I was steering the ship within the middle of the tempest.” The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Wednesday accused Morrison of a “clear misleading of parliament”, and suggested Morrison apologize to the Australian people.
It was revealed in the week the previous prime minister had sworn into the portfolios of health, finance, resources, home affairs, and treasury between 2020 and 2021.
Albanese said it appeared Morrison held those portfolios until the Coalition’s election loss in May and he was awaiting further advice from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and therefore the law officer about the legal implications of the undisclosed ministerial arrangements.
Shortly before the news conference, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet published on its website the four instruments, signed by the governor who appointed Morrison to those portfolios.
“We took decisions, I did as a primary minister, we did as a cupboard, at federal and state level that a number of us would never have dreamed that we’d ever need to make,” Morrison said of his actions.
He alluded to people being “led to create judgments out of context”, explaining his behavior by saying the pandemic situation was “highly uncertain”.
“I think there was an excellent risk that within the midst of that crisis those powers may be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which might have caused unnecessary angst within the middle of a plague and will have impacted on the day-to-day functioning of the govt.,” Morrison said.
“Frankly I believe the events of a previous couple of days have highlighted how this might have happened.”
Former home affairs minister Karen Andrews has demanded Morrison resign, as has independent senator Jacqui Lambie.
Albanese, giving his own news conference in Brisbane, ridiculed Morrison’s claims that he forgot being sworn into the house affairs and treasury ministries.
“It’s a farce. This was a slippery slope that Scott Morrison went down, that Peter Dutton and also the remainder of his cabinet glided by with, day after day, week after week, month after month,” he said.
Morrison said he never exercised any powers under the portfolios he was sworn into, and he never instructed any of the departments that they were under his jurisdiction.
“I didn’t exercise them because, thankfully, the acute circumstances within which I had established these powers to act in, thankfully, failed to arise,” he said.
“The indisputable fact that ministers were unaware of those things is really proof of my lack of interference or intervention … I used to be not co-administering any of those.”
Morrison previously said he failed to receive department briefings in those portfolios, However, Morrison failed to fully explain why he decided to feature the portfolios of treasury and residential affairs to his powers in May 2021, a year after taking over finance and health, saying only that “Covid was still real in 2021”.
Morrison also criticized the media stationed outside his range in Cronulla, and asked reporters not to “invade the privacy of my family.”
Morrison’s public statement came hours after numerous Coalition colleagues backed him to stay in parliament. Former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott acknowledged the ministerial arrangements were unusual but failed to back entails Morrison to resign.
Howard claimed a number of the criticism was “over the top”.
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, and current deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, also rubbished entails Morrison quitting.
Albanese is scheduled to carry a conference in Brisbane this afternoon.
