During the Pandemic of Covid-19, the former leader had accumulated the functions, among others, of Minister of the Interior, Health, Finance, without notifying anyone. It was sanctioned, Wednesday, by a motion of censorship, an unprecedented but symbolic measure.
by Isabelle Dellerba (Sydney, Correspondence)
Their former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was also Minister of Health, Finance, Interior, Treasury and Miners, but the Australians knew nothing about it. It was only in August, three months after its defeat in the legislative elections, that the country discovered the pot with roses. During the pandemic, the conservative leader had granted himself, in the greatest secrecy, five ministerial portfolios. An acracadabrant story which earned him, Wednesday, November 30, to be sanctioned by the vote of a motion of censorship, essentially symbolic, in Parliament.
Before him, no former head of government had received such a blame. His actions have “eroded public confidence in Australian democracy” and prevented real empowerment, condemned the House of Representatives. It should now adopt a legislative amendment making the public announcement of ministerial appointments compulsory. Because the former leader, who stubbornly refuses to resign from his post of deputy, has not violated any law. “As Prime Minister, I tried to exercise my responsibility during this extremely difficult period,” he defended, impavid, a few minutes before the vote of the motion.
commission of Survey
The case began in March 2020, in the midst of COVID-19 crisis. The government is then preparing to decree the state of health emergency within the framework of the Biosecurity Act, which gives immense powers to the Minister of Health. As a precaution, the heavyweights of the government, gathered within the National Security Committee, decide to provide the country with a Minister of Health Bis, in the event that the first finds himself in the incapacity to exercise his functions . Scott Morrison recovers the position. In the months that followed, the manager, continuing on his momentum, will attribute the powers of four other portfolios. However, it will never use the prerogatives thus acquired with the exception of once, when it ended an important gas project off Sydney.
Responsible for shedding light on this story, a commission of inquiry noted, in its conclusions delivered on November 26, that the first two appointments, the functions of Minister of Health and Minister of Finance, had indeed been Decided “under the extreme pressure of responding to the beginning of the pandemic of Covid-19”. On the other hand, she stressed that the posts of Minister of the Interior and Secretary of the Treasury had “little, if not, a link with the pandemic”, before above all denouncing “the absence of disclosure of the appointments to the public, harmful to confidence vis-à-vis the government “.
You have 42.32% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.