Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Scott Morrison Fiasco" with Peter van Onselen

Transcript

"The Scott Morrison Fiasco" with Peter van Onselen · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get A Humans. Today on the show we dig deep into one of the most perplexing political scandals
• 0:10
  that I think I've ever seen in Australian politics. Perplexing because the person at the heart
• 0:16
  of the scandal has motives that to me appear completely inscrutable. It is a scandal that has
• 0:23
  divided people along political lines and has captivated the attention of Australia much longer
• 0:28
  than I would have expected it to. It involves the former prime minister, who's not all that
• 0:33
  former, where only a hundred and a few days into the new administration of his successor.
• 0:39
  And his behavior during the pandemic, in particular, his habit, secretive habit, if you will,
• 0:48
  of accumulating other ministries to himself. So if you're in the United States,
• 0:53
  in a parliamentary democracy, we have ministers who have particular portfolios. And those portfolios
• 0:59
  might be the treasury or finance or natural resources or education or something like that. They're
• 1:04
  like cabinet, I mean, they are cabinet ministers, but they're in America. They're appointed
• 1:09
  outside of Congress by the executive themselves, by the president. In a parliamentary democracy,
• 1:15
  those people are also parliamentarians. So they come from Congress and then they also form
• 1:20
  the cabinet and they make the big decisions about things. Well, in this case, the prime minister
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  throughout the course of the pandemic, and I guess over the course of more than 12 months,
• 1:30
  decided to secretly decree that he himself was a co-carbonate minister, a co-secretary in
• 1:42
  the American parliament, secretary of the treasury, secretary of the environment, all this sort of
• 1:45
  stuff. It's almost like a president just deciding that not only are they president,
• 1:49
  but they also want to be secretary of state, and they also want to be secretary of the interior,
• 1:55
  and they don't want to tell anyone about it. But why would you do that? And why would you not
• 2:00
  exercise that power, except for in one case? This weird situation has been captivating Australian
• 2:08
  political insiders for the past month. So I wanted to get the ultimate Australian political insider
• 2:12
  on the show to break it down for you, and to tell me what he thinks it means for Australian
• 2:18
  democracy and for democracy around the world. Peter also has some interesting, we're talking about
• 2:22
  Peter Van Osselen. He also has some very interesting insights about the differences between
• 2:26
  Australian and American democracy and the threats that each of them face. So this is well worth
• 2:31
  to listen, even if you're not obsessed by the minutiae of Australian democracy. But trust me,
• 2:36
  you will be by the time you hear Peter explain it. Peter is a political academic. He teaches
• 2:42
  politics at the university level, but he's best known as a broadcaster and a writer. He's
• 2:47
  essentially the chief political correspondent for Network 10, which is a television channel. I
• 2:52
  won't go through all of his litany of other appearances, but basically you can see him a lot on
• 2:57
  the project. You can see him on 10 news, and you can hear him being interviewed as a political
• 3:00
  scientist and general political authority. He's written a bunch of books. You'll hear about his
• 3:05
  upcoming book as well, but without further ado, please enjoy the one and only Peter Van Osselen.
• 3:11
  This is my breakfast. I think they call it a piccolo, but I forgot to ask for its skin.
• 3:29
  It's too small. Well, yeah, but if I have too much milk, then I feel like I'm not having
• 3:34
  enough coffee with my milk. Well, that's why you have to get an extra strong, which is what you did.
• 3:38
  Which is what I did. Yeah, extra strong. Lots of milk. I don't understand a piccolo. It's
• 3:42
  gone before you even know you've got it. You know what? Like in a sense, this is a byproduct of
• 3:48
  my coffee pod machine at home, I think. Right. Where I can just keep ordering more. Yeah, it makes
• 3:52
  no difference because I just have short blacks. Right. Right. The difference is is I have
• 3:56
  the same environmental vandal for using the pods. You should just get an espresso machine. The pods
• 4:01
  create too much waste. I could just lie until you that I have one of those special pod dispensers.
• 4:05
  All right. There are ones out there that refill the refill your refillable pod with it.
• 4:12
  Create new pods. Just get an espresso machine. They're great. Like an actual old-fashioned one.
• 4:17
  I use it. What? You can get, I mean, if you want to spend $15,000, you can get a really good one,
• 4:21
  but you can also just get one for a few hundred bucks from... We had one of them a long time ago.
• 4:25
  One of the ones that was really expensive that crushed the beans and then... Yeah, right.
• 4:29
  Did it. Yeah. And then for whatever reason. So much better than the your pods. Yeah, but having
• 4:34
  said that, we now get all this all-pressive put out pods. Okay. And they're, I mean, obviously
• 4:39
  doesn't change the environmental implications, but that doesn't matter, right? Because we have
• 4:42
  this special coffee pod dispensing. Right. Yeah, of course. And you also enjoy yourself while the
• 4:46
  world is burning. Yeah. And more. That's true. With a fragrant arabica. But it's sent. But it's a
• 4:52
  good aroma. Now the pods are drinkable. He's my point. Right. So the all-press pods given that
• 4:57
  I've just never quite understood what the selling proposition is. I mean, it's slightly easier
• 5:01
  than scooping some coffee and putting it into your thing. But it's a lot more expensive. It
• 5:06
  doesn't taste as good. And it's still a little bit fiddly and messy when the pods dribbling a little
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  bit of... Oh, I don't know. When you do the canister or the... I take issue with that. Really?
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  Like that side of it's easy. But yeah, I don't look... I guess it's just a case of we bought it.
• 5:21
  Yeah. And so now we're just using environmental vandalism 101. This is how it's justified.
• 5:26
  We have the pod was been where the rubber meets the road of environmental vandalism with
• 5:30
  PETA vandalism. So we were going to record yesterday and you were just telling me that
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  try up at the debating championships for your daughter, which is so congratulations are in order.
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  And I was... You were saying that you were a debater. No surprises when you were younger.
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  And when I was at uni, I was a member of the debating team at UTS, where I was doing
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  journalism and media. And at Sydney at the same time, at Sydney Uni, about a half-generation
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  above me were all the chaser guys. They were the debating heroes at the time. That was my
• 6:02
  generation. So I debated against Charles Firth, Greg Rueckasel, Julian Morro, all those guys here.
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  So when I was in, I think, first year and they must have been in their 17th year of their
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  law degrees and whatever they were doing, we all went to the Australasian debating championships
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  in Manila, in the Philippines. You know, that's exactly where I went, but the years are going to
• 6:23
  defy. I went to the Australasians in Manila in 1997. Wow. And then went to worlds again. No wait,
• 6:29
  that was it. That was it. That was my first year. In 1997. Absolutely. I must have been there.
• 6:34
  We must have been there together. So we're at the same Australasian. Yep. Yep. So what uni were you at?
• 6:38
  I was at UNSW and we made the semi-finals and I've never got past the semi-finals,
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  which is why my daughter winning her semi-final last night. I told her she's broke the Van
• 6:48
  Oncel and Curse. I made the semi-finals at the Australian Championships, which are the
• 6:54
  novice events. Right. Yeah. I made it three times at the Australasians and twice at the worlds
• 7:00
  and never got past the bloody semi-finals. There you go. But that was, yeah, that was the first
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  semi-final I made. I was there with Pip Webb and Rosdixson. Amazing. Right. So yeah, we were just
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  riddle rookies who were just clinging on to the hull. We were in first year. Yeah, we were
• 7:12
  barnacles clinging on to the hull. Well, you must have been the same year as Pip and Rosdixson. They
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  were first years. I was older, but they were both much better school debaters than I ever were. I
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  think they were both in the world championship winning Australian schools. So this was their first
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  university tournament. I was the sort of grizzly veteran of uni debating. They were better debaters,
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  but younger would be the way to put it. So they sort of turned up naively. Yeah. Gave speeches of
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  substance rather than style. Right. And then I would get up at the third spot and sort of
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  deliver a speech that they both look completely perplexed by. But because it was uni debating,
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  they were new to it. So they were sort of begrudgingly accepting over time that the adjudicators
• 7:52
  weren't entirely dismissive the way they were of what I had to say. Yeah, I still remember that
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  Dom Knight, who was one of the chaser boys, and if you're not listening to Australia,
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  they're a popular comedy troupe, I suppose, a sketch comedy troupe, a satirical
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  comedians. Dom failed me in one of my debates, failed. I mean, because he was adjudicating.
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  Yeah, right. But he better fail like a whatever. I mean, we didn't win.
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  Oh, okay. Well, I guess by definition, that's a failure. We know the irony, you know,
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  as you say, for people who don't know the chaser overseas, they've been a long-term, very good
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  satirical comedy group. They weren't the funny debaters at uni. At uni, they were really serious.
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  There weren't jokes involved in their speeches. They were very good debaters. I think
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  Julia Moore might have won Australasians, but they were all of them very good debaters,
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  but completely serious. No gags in their speeches, which is why when they started, I think,
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  originally as a newspaper before they ended up on television all the rest of it, I am happy to
• 8:54
  admit is one of my early powers of prediction, which are so bad. I didn't think there was any
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  chance that we're going to be good at this, because I remember... At the comedy, Malak. Exactly,
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  because we all thought, well, hang on a second, they've never been funny. And then all of a sudden,
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  they were, and I had to swallow my words, but they weren't debaters in the way that you might have
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  expected. They were very serious. Yeah. Look, I remember two things about that tournament. I remember
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  being, I remember losing unjustly when Dom night, I don't even remember what we were debating,
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  and then I remember winning completely unjustly as well, because it was one of those cases where
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  the adjudicated just agrees with the proposition that you happened to have been allotted.
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  Oh yeah. So it was... Any debater worth this, Salt, remembers the shaftings where they deserve to
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  win, forgets the moment that they get told they won, that they didn't deserve it. Yeah. So I still
• 9:44
  remember the proposition was that Japan should not have an offensive army. Right. Now, I went
• 9:52
  in on the... I guess I must have been arguing that Japan should not have an offensive army.
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  But hopefully, or else I can already tell you why you didn't win. I didn't... I didn't even know
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  that they didn't. Yeah. Well, I was so... I was so young and naive. I just thought that Japan,
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  like all other countries, has an army. And so, of course, they have... Like, I didn't realize
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  that it's... Did your team explain it to you? Yeah, it sort of became apparent throughout the process
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  of the debate. I had a... I had a similarly embarrassing moment. We had a debate, I kind of
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  remember what the exact topic was, but it was about the Tamil Tigers. And I didn't know what the
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  Tamil Tigers were. But fortunately, first year university students Pippin-Ros did. You know,
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  this fourth year student at the time had no idea. A type of Sri Lankan Tiger, literally.
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  And I was third speaker, right? So I was able to watch the whole debate, learn a lot,
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  and then riff off the back of that. That's the good thing with being a third speaker. You don't
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  need to know anything, as long as you've got a bit of style and some comedic flair. Well, you'll win it.
• 10:55
  Should we talk about the former prime minister, which is why I wanted to pick your brain mainly.
• 11:00
  What did he do? Well, basically... That's got everyone up in arms. He secretly took over multiple
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  ministerial portfolios. And I should say, when I say take over, he co-opted. So he didn't boot
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  the ministers out, but he became... Nor did he make any decisions or any part from one. No, that's
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  true. Apart from one. But he co-opted the roles, and he became a bit like a collector. He was
• 11:23
  addicted. I got the impression, I'm not a clinician, I should be clear, but I got the impression
• 11:29
  he became addicted to taking these over. Doctor of insulin, give me your professional opinion,
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  but psychology and the psychiatric condition. I am a doctor, but of political science.
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  Yeah, I had no training in this field. No. Although I have occasionally tried to pretend
• 11:43
  that I was a doctor and let it be unsaid for the benefits of life. Don't get me started on that.
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  Whenever I try to stop people from doing that, I get hounded on social media as being dismissive
• 11:53
  of PhDs. Because everyone goes, where are the actual doctors? The doctor physicians aren't real doctors,
• 11:59
  where are the doctors? Because sometimes I object to people presenting themselves as doctors.
• 12:04
  If you're talking about something where there could be any ambiguity. Which happened a lot
• 12:08
  during the pandemic. It happened a lot during the pandemic. You know, he is doctor so-and-so to tell
• 12:11
  you something about vaccines. Yeah, they're a doctor of English. They don't know what they're talking.
• 12:16
  Stop calling them doctor in that context. I have rarely used the nomenclature simply because
• 12:22
  in journalism, I'm bringing his fancy words to nomenclature. Only a doctor would say nomenclature.
• 12:27
  That was my PhD, that word. But anyway, I really use the title because it is seen as a little bit
• 12:33
  unnecessary. But you're on a plane and someone has a heart attack. Is there a doctor on the plane?
• 12:38
  Yes. Well, now we're getting sidetracked. Now we're getting your political science doctorate.
• 12:43
  Now we're getting sidetracked, but I do have to tell you this because it is 100% true
• 12:47
  and 100% embarrassing. I was on a plane once where I was in business class, which I'm not usually,
• 12:53
  but I was getting- you don't have to apologize for your white privilege. I was getting-
• 12:57
  Or white people at the time. I was getting magical service and it was- and whoever booked it,
• 13:02
  it must have been a corporate thing that they put me as doctor. So it was doctor Van Oncel and
• 13:05
  this, doctor Van Oncel and that. And I started to realize that I think I was getting this service
• 13:10
  because I thought I was a medical doctor. Anyway, something happened on the flight. It wasn't life
• 13:14
  threatening thankfully. But the stewardess came to me and genuinely said, can you help? There's
• 13:20
  an incident at the back of the plane. Somebody's got some issues and I literally had to explain that I'm
• 13:27
  not a real doctor. I have a PhD and this is where it gets really bad. Is next to me, there was a
• 13:34
  lady sitting next to me, not a word of a lie. And she said to the stewardess, look, I'm now in a
• 13:39
  different field, but I am actually a trained nurse if you would like me to go back and have a look
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  and she then went and helped which I was unable to do. I was sort of yelling down the
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  corridor and she left that my mum was a nurse. I once dated a man, sort of added to the
• 13:57
  desperation. And the service plummeted after that for the rest of the flight. They just threw
• 14:03
  a sandwich at it. What are the odds of that, by the way? What are the odds of that? Well,
• 14:10
  depends how often you go by doctor. But yeah, okay. And when is this taking place?
• 14:15
  So this started at the very beginning of the pandemic. So I think the first time he did it
• 14:19
  was in March and it was a reasonable thing of 2020, of 2020. And it was a reasonable thing for him to
• 14:24
  do it then arguably because higher the pandemic at the beginning of it, people don't know what's
• 14:30
  happening. The health minister that he became, he co-opted the health portfolio and he told the
• 14:35
  health minister, Greg Hunt's name, that he was going to co-op this role because emergency powers
• 14:40
  in Australia for the health minister when they get utilized, they probably never should have been
• 14:44
  legislated. They're very strong. And there was a genuine argument that it wasn't a good idea for
• 14:50
  one person as the health minister to have all these powers. And equally, what would happen if he
• 14:54
  got COVID and you wanted to have somebody that could therefore take the powers over. And
• 14:58
  were those powers pre-existing? They were pre-existing, but they were pre-existing, but not
• 15:03
  not brought into effect. So they needed to be brought into operation for pandemic or some such
• 15:08
  stress. And there was some kind of emergency decree in March of 2020. They were activated,
• 15:13
  those latent health powers. Exactly. And having done that, he also, he sort of advised from his
• 15:18
  then attorney general who said that this was entirely legal for him to become the co-health
• 15:24
  minister. Now, I'm led to believe that it was sort of an oversight that they didn't then just
• 15:29
  make an announcement, which I don't know that I entirely believe that, but it's possible. The
• 15:33
  reason it's possible is because the announcements were coming thick and fast. There were live press
• 15:36
  conferences. It would have been like this for world leaders right around the globe. So I will accept
• 15:42
  that proposition. Okay. So that one is possibly okay. And just to clarify, when you say that he
• 15:47
  was worried about what might happen if the health minister got COVID, that also doesn't really
• 15:52
  pass master because there's a way for, I mean, if you could sign something else in exactly,
• 15:56
  you would get an assistant health minister to become the health minister, wouldn't you? I agree.
• 15:59
  So on its own, that's the way that it normally, I mean, that's the way that it has always
• 16:02
  functioned throughout the history of this particular democracy. And that's why it's not acceptable
• 16:06
  for all the ones that are to follow, but I give that more as an addendum. The primary reason that
• 16:11
  you can justify the one only for health was that he told the health minister, he got the advice
• 16:17
  that it was legal from the attorney general, and there were these emergency powers that you could
• 16:21
  argue. I don't agree, by the way, but you could argue that therefore it's okay to have two,
• 16:26
  but you still should tell the public, which they didn't do. Yes. And the portfolio itself is obviously
• 16:31
  keenly relevant. I mean, it's the health portfolio. And this is where it gets weird because that one,
• 16:36
  you could sort of, if that was the only time he did it, and it came out years later, and they
• 16:40
  argue that it was an oversight that somehow it wasn't made public, you could potentially accept that.
• 16:45
  And that's the one that came out and became public because Scott Morrison, as I understand it,
• 16:49
  told the authors of a book that he did this because he thought it was a humble brag, if you like,
• 16:55
  that this was a smart thing for him to do in the way in the early stages of the pandemic.
• 16:58
  This is what a statesman would do. Yeah. Take ownership and control. Take charge.
• 17:03
  You know, go get him way. And that's the way it was written up in this book because I've read the
• 17:06
  book itself to see how they'd referred to it. But this is where it gets weird. So a week or so later,
• 17:11
  he decided he would also do it for the finance portfolio, and then had his own reasons in his mind.
• 17:17
  Why? Because, you know, he wanted to have co-equal powers to be able to make sudden decisions around
• 17:21
  finance, for example, but he didn't tell the finance minister, which was Matthias Corman back then.
• 17:26
  He's now the head of the OECD. He didn't tell him. He didn't tell his attorney general that he
• 17:30
  was doing this, whom was in on it when it came to the health minister. And then suddenly fast forward
• 17:35
  another year or so, a little bit more than a year. And so in early 2021, I believe it was April,
• 17:41
  he took over the resources portfolio, which also gave him courage of science, industry,
• 17:47
  and energy because it was all in the one department resource. Just pause from when you say he took
• 17:52
  over. What does that actually mean? He took the he co-opted the ministry. So in other words,
• 17:58
  can I as prime minister just decree that for myself? No, the governor general has to sign off on it.
• 18:03
  So the governor general in Australia, if any, Americans are listening, is basically, I mean,
• 18:08
  a statutory figurehead who occupies the role of the Queen of England in our country and is
• 18:15
  essentially a president with no powers, like you might have in some parliamentary democracies.
• 18:19
  There's a president who basically just does what cabinet tells them to do, but is the
• 18:22
  functionary who stamps forms and signs off on things. So the prime minister tells the governor
• 18:27
  general to sway him in in these additional ministry. And he did that with the health ministry in
• 18:33
  2020. And he did that with the health ministry and the finance fund with the governor general
• 18:38
  signed off on both those. Technically Buckingham Palace could have overruled it or could have
• 18:41
  intervened that would have been inappropriate, but that's the way the rules. And there's some
• 18:45
  criticism that the guy, including by me that the governor general should have at least
• 18:49
  insisted that the prime minister make this public. The governor general pushed back at that
• 18:53
  and argued that that's not his role. His role is to just simply do what the prime minister tells him
• 18:57
  to do. I think there's room in the constitution for somewhere between the two. In other words,
• 19:01
  clearly, clearly it's not only to do anything that the prime minister does. That's the whole point
• 19:06
  of having him there is as a fundamental check on defending the constitution against the prime minister.
• 19:12
  Exactly right. And that's why I would argue that he was obliged to at least ask questions,
• 19:17
  which we don't know if he even did because they're not talking about it. And that's what this inquiry
• 19:21
  that the new prime minister has set up will look into. But let me just say yes. So the governor general
• 19:25
  literally comes over to the prime minister's office. They did it all by letter. They did it all by letter.
• 19:30
  So there was no sort of there was no knighting with a sword or anything. I guess we're all
• 19:35
  in isolation throughout the early ones, right? I mean, in March, I guess in 2020 they can't
• 19:40
  make face-to-face presumably anyway. Yeah, my understanding is that none of them were face-to-face.
• 19:43
  It was all by correspondence, which you can do. But of course, the irony of this, Josh, is that
• 19:48
  this highlights why it didn't need to be done. The speed with which Scott Morrison was able to
• 19:54
  co-opt these ministries, his argument is that he needed to do it because what if something suddenly
• 19:58
  happened and somebody needed to take over the various ministries if something happened to the minister?
• 20:03
  Well, your secret moves to take them over in case that happened so swiftly proves that you didn't
• 20:10
  need somebody in the role to begin with because you can do exactly what you did secretly, so swiftly,
• 20:14
  not so secretly, if something were to go wrong. Yeah, and even if it took 36 hours for the
• 20:19
  letter to take that long for 15 minutes, I think. Right, yeah, to be there. They're probably fact-star,
• 20:23
  I was going to say they probably scanned, but they're probably fact-star, they're in government.
• 20:27
  Then, yes, and in the meantime, you would have an assistant minister. Exactly. You could already do that.
• 20:32
  Or you could even use, and there hasn't been much talk about this, you could actually use
• 20:35
  another minister, if it's in the same department. So for example, the one that he took over in April
• 20:41
  of 21, which we're about to talk about, the resource portfolio, the industry minister,
• 20:46
  or the science minister, or the energy minister, which I think is actually one portfolio,
• 20:50
  they can all do the role of the resource minister if the resource minister is down and out because
• 20:55
  it's the one department that has, and but for all of it. But at any rate, he takes over the resources
• 21:00
  portfolio, or co-ops it. And he did actually act in this one. Nothing to do with the pandemic,
• 21:06
  but he didn't like a decision that Keith Pitt, the resource minister, was planning to make.
• 21:11
  And ministers have powers away from cabinet, some powers, to be able to make particular decisions
• 21:17
  to do with their portfolio, whether they do or don't grant approval for a license or something
• 21:22
  of that ilk. And he didn't like what the resource minister was planning to grant as an offshore
• 21:27
  project. So he co-opted the portfolio in secret without telling the resource minister,
• 21:32
  and then he just went the other way with the portfolio decision. Now, the thing that's fascinating
• 21:36
  about that is, Keith Pitt did then find that out eventually because he had to find out that this
• 21:41
  thing had been rejected by another resource minister. He didn't know existed. So the prime minister
• 21:49
  let him know. Keith Pitt, who's not actually in the same party as Scott Morrison, he's a national
• 21:54
  in coalition with the Liberals and Scott Morrison is a liberal. Keith Pitt was outraged by this,
• 21:59
  complained to his leader, the national party leader, who is the deputy prime minister, but they sort
• 22:03
  of said, oh, look, there's an election on the horizon. Scott Morrison, he likes to be in control
• 22:07
  of things. Don't worry about it. And that was that. And so it sort of came in way more than just that.
• 22:11
  I mean, the deputy prime minister has subsequently said since losing power that he knew that if he
• 22:16
  actually took this to the prime minister and the prime minister would have deprived him, would have
• 22:19
  stripped away one of his ministries. Potentially that the prime minister had given him. I think one
• 22:24
  had given the national party the junior coalition partner one more portfolio than is normal. And
• 22:30
  that he hasn't absolutely no doubt about the way that politics has played and that the prime minister
• 22:33
  would have said, if you're going to ask these difficult questions, then go on. Go away. Go away.
• 22:37
  You'll take one of the ministries back. And he and he had his own issues. Malcolm McCormick, he was
• 22:42
  sort of clinging on to the leadership. He ended up losing it before the election in an internal
• 22:46
  challenge by an alternative leader, Barnaby Joyce. And sorry, it was Barnaby who was making those
• 22:50
  points, not McCormack. Yes, it was saying that this is the way that this happened. Yeah,
• 22:54
  that the prime minister would have responded. But at any rate, so it's still not over. Right,
• 22:58
  there's still more to come. So he does this. He acts in that resources portfolio. Then fast forward
• 23:04
  another month. And in April, in the countdown to the delivery of the budget, he then decides, you
• 23:09
  know what, I'm going to take over home affairs. And I'm also going to co-opt the Treasury portfolio,
• 23:14
  which again, for overseas listeners is slightly different to finance. We essentially have two people
• 23:19
  that control the finances, the finance minister and the treasurer. The treasurer is the more senior
• 23:23
  of the two. And his treasurer was also his deputy liberal leader in government as well. One of his
• 23:29
  closest colleagues in theory to the prime minister. So in May, all of a sudden, he takes over both
• 23:34
  of those portfolios. There was a new person in home affairs a couple of months before Karen Andrews.
• 23:40
  And the argument is that he wouldn't have done it to the previous home affairs minister who was
• 23:44
  Peter Dutton, the now leader in opposition. But he takes over the equal control of that.
• 23:48
  Wouldn't have done it to Dutton because Dutton was a leadership rival, a potential threat.
• 23:53
  The theory is that if Dutton had found out, not that he was telling people, because it was secret
• 23:57
  in both those cases, the theory is that he just wouldn't have wanted to do it to Peter Dutton
• 24:01
  because that would have if it had somehow come out, it would have so much ill will that there
• 24:06
  would have been a split the party into. Definitely. So that was too big a risk. Now we're inside
• 24:12
  the mind of Scott Morrison now. So anything's possible. But that's that's what the speculation
• 24:16
  in Canberra is. So and that's the end of the line. That's the last one he did was was the
• 24:20
  treasury off the back of also doing home affairs. So he co-opted all these portfolios, which technically
• 24:25
  he's still held all the way to election day when he lost the 21 May election of this year.
• 24:32
  And he was the co-minister for them all and you probably already know this, but some of your listeners
• 24:36
  might not. He there was a little asterix at the bottom of the ministerial sheet. Whenever they
• 24:43
  have a new ministry that would be put out, it has all the names of who's got what portfolio all
• 24:48
  the way through. They're sort of 45 ministers all up if you include all the assistant ministers.
• 24:53
  That's the allotment. There was a little asterix that started appearing not coincidentally as it
• 24:57
  turns out now over the last couple of years that says some ministers on this list may hold other
• 25:04
  portfolios that have not been listed on the list. Right. Now, for example, the prime one.
• 25:10
  For example, the prime minister is still holding health, home affairs, finance,
• 25:14
  treasury, ministers. The minister who goes by the nomenclature prime may also hold some other
• 25:20
  portfolios. Isn't that fascinating? Incredible. Now one weird thing about before we get to the
• 25:27
  the ins and outs of the ethics of all this and whether it means what it means for democracy,
• 25:32
  the weird thing about the treasury in particular is so the treasurer in Australia is sort of like
• 25:37
  the vice president. I mean, it is like the treasurer is the second most important person really in
• 25:42
  the government, like the deputy prime minister technically is the deputy, but the treasurer is really
• 25:46
  the next prime minister in waiting informally and many prime ministers come up through being the
• 25:52
  treasurer. At the time when Scott Morrison took over this or co-opted the treasurer portfolio,
• 25:59
  there was a delta outbreak in Australia and our previous attempts to keep the pandemic out in
• 26:06
  New South Wales, which had been fairly successful between about May of 2020 and I guess April or
• 26:13
  May of 2021 collapsed completely and New South Wales went into a long and harsh lockdown over the
• 26:22
  southern winter of 2021 trying to keep delta numbers down. And during that period, as I understand,
• 26:28
  it correct me if I'm wrong, in order to avoid the inability to travel to Canberra, the capital
• 26:34
  and work and so on, Josh Rodenberg, the treasurer, moved in with the prime minister,
• 26:39
  Scott Morrison, into his personal residence so that the two of them could literally live together
• 26:44
  in the same house. They were making chicken curries together. They were making bacon and eggs for
• 26:49
  breakfast and they were literally doing the work of the state from the same isolated
• 26:58
  prime ministerial home and it was while they were living together that the prime minister co-opted
• 27:05
  the treasurer's portfolio without telling the treasurer I was sleeping in the next room.
• 27:11
  That sounds right. I mean, I know that all of that is true that they spent a number of weeks
• 27:15
  living together during that period in the lodge in Canberra, the prime minister's official
• 27:20
  residence and they were doing social media posts about what they were doing together in terms of
• 27:24
  some of the cooking and the cleaning and doing media interviews if you can believe it. So all
• 27:28
  of this was happening. That is true. I wasn't entirely sure that it overlapped with the exact
• 27:33
  timing of this, of this, of this. I'm open to being corrected. I'm not correcting you because
• 27:38
  you may be right. I haven't checked that specifically but it would make sense because I believe it was
• 27:44
  in the countdown to budget that they were living together and of course it was in the countdown to
• 27:48
  that budget in May that the timing was that Scott Morrison took over that portfolio. And even if it
• 27:53
  was a week or two out, you would imagine that at some stage while you're having a whiskey with
• 27:57
  each other watching the footy, you might say, oh mate, by the way. By the way, I'm now also the true
• 28:05
  just want to just a little heads up. I've been accumulating. I've got a new hobby. You know,
• 28:11
  some people collect stamps. I'm collecting additional portfolios. Well, I collected toy soldiers
• 28:16
  as a kid. I can understand that the prime minister got addicted to this. Now what I don't understand
• 28:21
  and what I really want to pick your brains about is and where we may disagree is I don't quite
• 28:25
  understand why it all matters and I don't quite understand why it has transfixed the Australian
• 28:31
  public for weeks. When I heard first heard about this, I thought, oh, this is one of those
• 28:36
  interesting wonky inside the beltway kind of political journalist stories that were last for
• 28:41
  about 36 hours and then everyone will move on. And day after day after day, it kept being the lead
• 28:46
  item in the news. New news kept breaking and the former prime minister did himself no favours
• 28:52
  by not being upfront about it all. He went on Ben Fordham's show on 2GB and Ben asked him directly
• 28:57
  when I think we only knew about a couple of portfolios. Did you see yourself in as anything else
• 29:02
  and the prime minister said not to my recollection, which is a bit dodgy, you know. To say the least.
• 29:08
  He went not to your recollection and he hadn't divulged the treasurer, like the treasurer.
• 29:12
  Oh, I'm a fairs. That's right. So two portfolios he previously held.
• 29:16
  Look, I love Ben and Ben Fordham's made of mine, but at that point that's a real missed opportunity
• 29:19
  to go, what do you mean not to your recollection? I mean, did you or didn't you? And then just keep
• 29:23
  drilling down on that until, you know, Morrison has to answer one way or another or look like a
• 29:27
  complete idiot. Anyway, so I just thought this was going to go away because I thought, what do we
• 29:34
  know about Scott Morrison? We know that he's obsessed with marketing. He's a marketing guy. His
• 29:40
  background is in marketing and advertising. So he has an impression of being a bit slick
• 29:46
  and a bit too smart for his own boots. He's quite controlling. We've always known that.
• 29:52
  He doesn't like, you know, delegating duties to other people. And he's very much buck stops
• 29:58
  with me, kind of nice guy, you know, the affable uncle who's going to make sure that everything's
• 30:04
  okay and is going to take credit for everything and might be a little bit bumbling in the way that
• 30:08
  he does it, but it'll all come out good in the end as far as he's concerned because he's got
• 30:13
  your back. And all of those things are perfectly consistent with him doing something which admittedly
• 30:20
  is quite bizarre and hard for me to understand why he would do it. But in the absence of a motive
• 30:26
  that makes any sense, I don't understand why everyone thinks like a lot of the response has been
• 30:32
  this was an attack on the democratic institutions of the state of Australia. This is a shattering
• 30:38
  of the soft guardrails of democracy and much like Erdogan or, you know, Orban or Donald Trump or
• 30:44
  something, you know, this is the this is the leaching into our democratic body politic of the
• 30:49
  undemocrat. And I'm like, what are you talking about? This is a frivolous guy who did a frivolous
• 30:55
  silly thing. Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. So I first up, I don't think that Scott Morrison
• 31:02
  was trying to unwind Australian democracy. I choose to believe that he wasn't that delusional.
• 31:07
  I choose to believe that his decision to do this secretly over all the time that he did
• 31:12
  was sort of, if you like, a personification of his arrogance and his control freakish nature.
• 31:19
  You know, he's a control freak. He thinks that the solution to every problem is more of Scott
• 31:23
  Morrison. And so therefore the more portfolio of Scott Morrison held the better and he just
• 31:28
  became, you know, non clinically addicted to this would be the way that I would put it, okay?
• 31:32
  So I choose not to believe that he was so delusional that he was trying to undermine or undercut
• 31:37
  Australian democracy over time. However, I do think that there are profound implications for
• 31:42
  Australian democracy in this, which I want to get to. But I should make this point. I'm not sure
• 31:47
  that it transfixed the nation for the period of time that it did the media. So people like me,
• 31:53
  who report on daily politics, particularly in Canberra in the press gallery, had real outrage
• 31:59
  around this and made it the central focus for a long time, exactly as you say. I'm not sure that
• 32:04
  the public did. I think there was a bit of a move on attitude for a lot of people. But bad luck,
• 32:08
  guess what? We're still running the news. Well, not to use radio as my trump card, but I'll use
• 32:12
  radio as my trump card, which is that we're, you know, given that I talk to people live for three
• 32:17
  hours every day, I can assure you any time it came up and any time I would articulate anything
• 32:21
  remotely like what I just said, the text line would explode with people saying, with listeners.
• 32:26
  And this may be, you know, that's a self-selecting group as well because it's the
• 32:29
  ABC listeners, but a lot of the people who I speak to around the state in regional ABC stations,
• 32:34
  which will, which my show also goes out there. Echo that as well. Echo that as well. You know,
• 32:38
  so if, you know, if someone in Orange or Tamworth is texting saying, how can you not think that
• 32:43
  this is a threat to democracy, then I think it's more. Well, I'm glad if that's the case because
• 32:47
  that was my view that this was something that should be transfixed in the nation, which for the
• 32:52
  reasons I'm about to go into. But I was just unsure whether it was, which actually left me wondering
• 32:56
  whether the new Prime Minister politically speaking needed to be more cautious in how strongly he
• 33:01
  was prosecuting this. But we can talk about that as well. Yeah. But if you're right, then I'm glad
• 33:06
  by that because I'm glad that in our democracy, you know, your average punter, if you like, was
• 33:11
  concerned about what this meant. So with the caveat that I think Scott Morrison's motives were not
• 33:17
  delusional to undercut democracy, the thing that shocked me about this, and maybe I should have
• 33:21
  known the answer to this as a political scientist, not a real doctor, I, you know, put him in my
• 33:26
  academic cap on, I am just surprised to find out that he was able to do this legally without
• 33:32
  there being some sort of outing of it without a public statement being required in the Gazette, for
• 33:36
  example. That shocked me to find out that this was even legal. It shocked me at an even more primitive
• 33:43
  level that you can have multiple people in the same portfolio without a clear conflict. Yeah,
• 33:49
  without a clear authority like who doesn't make any sense to me that the constitution would provide
• 33:54
  for people having multiple, not for people having multiple portfolios, but for the same portfolio
• 33:59
  being handled by multiple. Well, that surprised me as well. So for example, in the portfolio, not all
• 34:04
  ministers have this, but a lot of ministerial portfolios, as we've talked about, have the power for
• 34:08
  a minister not through cabinet, but as the individual minister to make decisions, right? When you
• 34:14
  have two ministers that hold that portfolio, it actually becomes a rush to who makes the decision
• 34:19
  first, right? Which is absurd in a public policy system. So that surprised me to learn that.
• 34:24
  Although surely, just socially and culturally, you would assume that the person with the higher
• 34:29
  ranking in the other portfolio would be the one to get their way, which they did in the case of
• 34:33
  Scott Morrison making that resources decision. In the sense that the minister can go off and make
• 34:38
  their decision all they want, and then the prime minister the next day can deprive them of the
• 34:41
  ministry. True, but then the prime minister can be, but then this is the nature of Westminster,
• 34:45
  Westminster, he isn't at the minister, the prime minister can then lose his or her job instantly,
• 34:50
  as well from a vote from the party room. So there's all those checks and balances, and that brings
• 34:54
  me to my real issue with this is, yes, it's a bit of an inside the beltway, or I thought it was a
• 34:59
  bit of an inside the beltway issue to some extent, but I'm glad if it's transfixed. Look, it may just
• 35:03
  be that people who hate Scott Morrison really, really want to see him go down, you know, and want him
• 35:08
  to get in Parliament or something, and so they really riled up about it. I don't know. I'm
• 35:13
  riled up about it simply because like this is, even though I have enormous faith in Australia's
• 35:19
  political culture, and that's important as a precursor to make that point, I also don't believe
• 35:25
  that he was delusional thinking he could usurp our democracy, but having said that, this is how it
• 35:31
  happens, right? Like this sort of example around the world is one of the stepping stones to the
• 35:37
  erosion of democracy, and it is a serious thing, even if we assume it's never going to happen in
• 35:42
  a country like Australia because of our political culture, or because of the checks and balances
• 35:46
  that our parliamentary system provides, the erosion, the slow erosion of democracy starts like this,
• 35:53
  even if that wasn't Scott Morrison's intent, and that's what riled me up about it. Democracy
• 35:58
  dies in the dark, and Scott Morrison kept everyone in the dark about the ministries that he held,
• 36:04
  and that's a bad thing. Right, but it strikes me that there would be a simple fix to this,
• 36:09
  which is we go, oh, that's a weird quirk of Australian democracy that a Prime Minister can do
• 36:13
  that, we should probably fix that little loophole and just make a rule that either a ministry can only
• 36:19
  be held by one person, or if it's going to be held by multiple people, that has to be published in
• 36:22
  the Parliamentary Gazette, which I suspect is exactly what they'll end up doing. And then like
• 36:26
  end of story, that's a 15 minute process, that's not a month long like bringing our hands about
• 36:32
  the fate of Australian democracy. Yeah, that's fair, but I still think it's reasonable, given that
• 36:37
  someone rose to be our what 30th Prime Minister, that he gets appropriately hauled over the
• 36:43
  coals about this, because he should know better. You know, the bigger thing that this raises for
• 36:48
  me, actually, is that, you know, and I would say this as somebody who studies and teaches politics,
• 36:53
  but I think civics and the teaching of politics should be compulsory at school all the way through
• 37:01
  to year 12. I think that you have to do some version of civics until the end of year 10. I think
• 37:04
  it should be a compulsory unit in the high school certificate, and I think it should be compulsory
• 37:08
  to count towards your units. English, I think his maths is getting there in some states, but I think
• 37:13
  it should be compulsory, and I think people should know when I understand this. You're saying that we
• 37:17
  should teach 25 million people civics so that the one person who becomes Prime Minister knows
• 37:22
  what the fuck they're doing. So that we all realise how the system works and how it is inappropriate
• 37:28
  when it doesn't work. But I mean, you could smell. You could smell this a mile off, Peter. I mean,
• 37:32
  I, you know, I'm not saying that this was obviously fishy, and yet because I, well, like, why do you
• 37:38
  think he did it? This is what I, this is why I've left. That's the part I don't understand. What is
• 37:42
  he, what was he thinking? If I had to choose, I would, I would love to have Scott Morrison sat down
• 37:51
  in a cooperative sense with someone who is a political psychologist. I'll do it. I'll do it for you.
• 37:58
  I would love to, I would love to, because honestly, this is, and the now Prime Minister Anthony
• 38:04
  Albanese actually said this in a moment, I thought of real honesty in one of these media conferences,
• 38:11
  because I think part of this has been that he's taking this opportunity to attack Scott Morrison,
• 38:14
  part of these that he's outraged. But in a moment of real honesty, in a comment that he gave,
• 38:18
  he just said, I can't get my paraphrasing. I can't understand the mind that decides to do this.
• 38:26
  I just don't understand it. And I'm in the same spot. Yeah. Like, the only thing I can think of
• 38:31
  is this sort of arrogance or conceit of power that he felt like, you know what? The more things that I
• 38:38
  have control of, even if I don't ultimately use them, the safer the country is, because it
• 38:43
  aren't I great. Yeah. That's the only thing I can think of. Me too. I've been trying to think,
• 38:47
  and I think one reason why it has captivated everyone so much is because it's so inexplicable,
• 38:53
  and is therefore quite open to the most nefarious interpretations. So people, so the 20% of the Australian
• 39:00
  population who has always just low the Scott Morrison has grounds for thinking that this reveals
• 39:07
  his true colors as a would-be dictator, because there's no other more reasonable, plausible explanation
• 39:12
  for what was going through his head. I mean, I think the most generous, when I thought that this
• 39:18
  all only happened in March and April of 2020, I thought what's probably happened is he's had a
• 39:25
  many nervous breakdown at the start of the pandemic and has felt completely overwhelmed. I mean,
• 39:30
  I don't know whether that's clinically accurate, but you know, he feels he wanted to become
• 39:35
  prime minister because why not become prime minister? Because he's a good bloke and, you know,
• 39:38
  being prime minister would be fun. You get little flags on the front of your car and you get to
• 39:41
  fly around on the prime ministerial aeroplane and stuff. You know, but he's not a big vision guy.
• 39:47
  He's not a John Howard or Bob Hawker or Paul Keating who had fundamental ideas about the
• 39:53
  trajectory that they wanted to push the country on. He's just a good bloke as far as he sees himself.
• 39:58
  And then all of a sudden, the planet gets plunged into this crisis of historic proportions and he
• 40:05
  goes, holy shit, I am going to fall. And he's already had the bushfires remember. So he's had a
• 40:11
  catastrophic summer in 2019 to 2020 where he was roundly and justly pilloried for being out of
• 40:20
  touch and for allowing a massive natural disaster to completely spin out of his control.
• 40:24
  And we forget how they followed each other one by one. There was no gap between the stray was
• 40:29
  still on fire when the pandemic hit. Yes, that's right. Well, it was actually, believe it or not,
• 40:34
  it was the same weekend. So it was, there were two weekends in January of 2020. I wrote an essay
• 40:41
  for a book called Black Summer, which was, which was a compilation of journalist recollections
• 40:47
  of that summer because I was on the air on doing the Breakfast Show on ABC Radio Sydney and also
• 40:52
  doing the weekend breakfast television show. So for like seven days a week, I was on the air
• 40:58
  during December and January. And there was one weekend, which was the first dump of rain, massive dump
• 41:06
  of rain, which was the weekend before, or the weekend of Australia day was either a weekend of
• 41:12
  Australia day or the weekend before Australia day 2020, which is the 26th of January. And
• 41:18
  within five days of that dump of rain, the first person stepped off a plane in Melbourne with COVID.
• 41:24
  Yeah, right. Well, and look, I tend to think when I try to get inside his head to understand why
• 41:30
  did this, I can see, as we've already talked about, why did the health one and thought it was a good
• 41:35
  idea. And I can kind of see how a week later doing the finance one happened. And I can see how with
• 41:42
  his personality, he just didn't bother to tell Matisse Corman. He wasn't close to Matisse Corman.
• 41:46
  Matisse Corman didn't back him over Dutton in the leadership showdown when they were trying to
• 41:50
  replace Malcolm Turnbulley back to Peter Dutton very closely walked into the room with him.
• 41:54
  They weren't close. And Matisse Corman was sort of, if you're like planning his departure from the
• 41:59
  moment, Scott Morrison became prime minister really. And you know, he's now gone and heading up the OECD
• 42:04
  instead. So I can sort of see why, you know, in an interpersonal sense, he didn't bother to tell him.
• 42:10
  I'm not just a finer, but I can see how it all happened in that early 2020 phase. The one that's
• 42:14
  then weird is when you're fast forward over a year to the three that he did in 2021. It's almost,
• 42:19
  it's almost like he wanted to stop Keith Pitt's decision in resources. And he remembered that he
• 42:25
  had this capacity to take over portfolios and co-op them. So he then decided to do it for a different
• 42:32
  motive to deny his ability to do that, which we do know was why he did that. He's admitted that.
• 42:37
  And then having done that, it's reminded him that he's got this power that he can secretly do.
• 42:42
  And then as you say, when Omicron strikes and we're counting down to the May budget,
• 42:46
  it was Delta. And then Karen Andrews takes over home affairs and he thinks, well,
• 42:52
  you know, I've always been partial to home affairs. I held a portfolio myself. Why don't I take that?
• 42:56
  And then he's got Josh with him and maybe he watches Josh undercook the curry and he thinks,
• 43:00
  you know what? I'm not sure about Josh's competence. I might grab that as well in treasury.
• 43:05
  It's like addiction at that point. So yeah, so there might be two different mindsets going on.
• 43:11
  I mean, in 2020, it might be what I was sort of speculating about, which is a kind of a freak out,
• 43:19
  basically, like a holy shit moment. And in a sense, justifiably, that, you know, he saw how
• 43:26
  everyone ultimately blames the person at the top during the bushfires.
• 43:29
  Yep. Right. You know, no one said that didn't he?
• 43:32
  Yeah, exactly. And he has said, yeah, at the end of the day, the buck stops with the prime minister.
• 43:39
  And when all of a sudden, the world throws some incredible challenge at you, then you arm up.
• 43:44
  And he saw part of his arming up as being like, oh my goodness, I just had what the hell am I
• 43:49
  going to do? I'd have to accrete as many resources and tools. I have to have as many tools in my toolkit
• 43:53
  as I possibly can. And that includes being, you know, having these health powers and all that sort of
• 43:58
  stuff. As you say, then a year later, you can't use that same, oh, I'm just freaking out,
• 44:04
  rationale, because it's a year in, we haven't been smashed the way that we might have feared,
• 44:09
  you know, things are kind of chugging along. And importantly, the resource one had nothing to do
• 44:14
  with code. That's right. So then it becomes a, then it does it become a control freakery,
• 44:18
  then does it become like, it becomes a mechanism that he can stop something happening without
• 44:23
  the same fight that he would otherwise have to have in cabinet. And that thing that he was stopping
• 44:27
  happening was that because policy wise, the resource minister was right, but electrically,
• 44:33
  the prime minister felt like there would be too much of a liability to allow this, was it an
• 44:37
  offshore gas project? That's right. Yeah. And so the resource minister was partial to doing it
• 44:42
  purely on the policy grounds on the merit. He took a view that there was merit in this project.
• 44:47
  And it's a conservative, it's a center right government. So generally, they would be favorable to
• 44:51
  approving, you know, gas projects and stuff like that. We're not characteristic of a conservative
• 44:56
  prime minister to block that unless he's very concerned about his electoral, his upcoming election
• 45:01
  in, was it in Queensland, the gas project? I thought it was off New South Wales.
• 45:05
  But I understand to be corrected. But I do. My understanding is it was off, it was certainly
• 45:10
  offshore of marginal seats. I say so. So he was concerned, electorally, that this going ahead
• 45:17
  could have an impact on environmental votes in some of those electorates. Right. Which is not normally
• 45:22
  first order of business for Scott Morrison, quite the opposite. He's a guy that had a, he's a
• 45:27
  colon parliament, you know, at one point and has been used against him ever since. But he was
• 45:31
  thinking you're right. He was thinking about electoral politics versus minister. And, you know,
• 45:36
  I think at that point, he realised, hey, or someone in his office potentially realised maybe the
• 45:40
  inquiry will get to the bottom of this, that there's a mechanism here by which you can stop this
• 45:46
  without needing to sack Keith. And he's how you do it. And so he's gone down that path.
• 45:52
  And he's thought to himself, at the end of the day, when the government loses power because
• 45:57
  people are pissed off at the government and they're pissed off at me, it's not going to save you,
• 46:01
  Keith Pitt. Like, ultimately, you're making, you're making what you think is the right decision.
• 46:05
  But the buck stops with me as the prime minister. I'm leading this government. And when people go
• 46:09
  into the polls next election day, they're not going to be thinking about Keith Pitt. They don't
• 46:13
  even know who you are. They're going to be thinking about Scott Morrison. So I'm going to be an
• 46:16
  in charge kind of guy. And I'm going to take the charge that states have dealt me. Except only
• 46:21
  wanted was the outcome because none of us knew that he did that. So he wasn't getting
• 46:26
  the government. I mean, yeah, he wants the government to have the most positive impression
• 46:33
  in those marginal seats as he can. But you know what fascinates me is, I'm surprised
• 46:38
  on both sides of this. I'm surprised that Scott Morrison could do this without it leaking.
• 46:43
  Maybe he thought it would leak, but he thought it would look like he was strong and who cares
• 46:46
  because people would support his decision electorally. I'm also really surprised that having had
• 46:51
  it done to him that Keith Pitt didn't find a way to leak it because I would have now, you know,
• 46:57
  I can only assume that he didn't want to lose his ministry and therefore wanted to stay in the
• 47:02
  portfolio in the cabinet. You know, he'd been promoted and all the rest of it. But that surprises me.
• 47:07
  I would have thought that Keith Pitt would want that out and would find a way to get it to a
• 47:12
  journalist. But that didn't leak. I mean, this wasn't even in the book. The book, you know,
• 47:17
  in a grandiose way referred to the health portfolio, but also the finance one. The author hadn't
• 47:23
  gone to check whether the finance minister knew or not. So they just wrote it up as he did this to
• 47:27
  both health and finance. Matthias Corman on the other side of the world. Actually, I think he was
• 47:31
  visiting family in Perth at the time. But Matthias Corman reads this and, you know, he's like, what?
• 47:36
  You know, and he sort of, he gets contacted by journalists, myself included, by the way, saying,
• 47:42
  did you know about this? And he's replying to these journalists going, nope. And then suddenly,
• 47:47
  that kicks the story on, Sam made into her credit from news.com, their political editor. She then,
• 47:53
  she then finds out somehow that this also happened in relation to Keith Pitt and resources.
• 47:58
  Now, maybe that was the point at which Keith Pitt decided that he would leak it or at the
• 48:02
  least he confirmed it. And Sam scooped that. And then then it became that point that you were
• 48:07
  talking about a little earlier where, you know, Ben Fordham then asked the question of Scott Morrison,
• 48:11
  any other portfolios, not that I can recall. And then of course, by this stage, because Anthony
• 48:15
  Albanese is now the prime minister, he has gone to his department and said, I want a full list
• 48:20
  of the portfolios. And then he has subsequently had a press conference that I think it was the
• 48:24
  following day or two where he's announced actually it's five in total. You've got to add
• 48:29
  home affairs and treasury to it. And there was an AAP story that suggested that he also took
• 48:36
  over social services which ended up being incorrect. And Anne Rustin who was in that portfolio at the
• 48:41
  time, she, because my office at Channel 10, we contacted her about that. And she said that I was not
• 48:49
  aware that he took over my portfolio, but I was aware that it was a live option based on,
• 48:54
  you know, some of the commentary during the pandemic. And it turns out he didn't take that portfolio
• 48:58
  in that report from AAP was actually incorrect. But you know, this was during a time where we were
• 49:03
  wondering, did he co-opt every single ministry and we were waiting to find out? Well, yeah, that,
• 49:09
  I mean, it's interesting to think about whether or not that would have been a bigger scandal. I
• 49:13
  assume it would have been the just quickly on like how decisions get made and cabinet. The whole
• 49:19
  resources thing has baffled me a little bit because I've just assumed that ostensibly a minister
• 49:24
  has the discretion to make whatever call they want to make. But that any prime minister worth
• 49:29
  his salt has enough backing and cabinet and enough backing from his party colleagues that if he
• 49:34
  really lent on a minister and said, mate, you know, this is a cabinet decision and it's an important
• 49:41
  electoral decision for us. Just swallow your pride on this one and let's go with the way that I
• 49:48
  want to do it. But that ultimately would happen that it would be rare that a minister would,
• 49:52
  would tell a prime minister and tell a cabinet, no, I'm going to go my own way on this and expect
• 49:58
  to have at least a long political career after that. I think that's largely true, but there are two,
• 50:03
  there are two official types of ministerial decisions. There's what's called delegated ministerial
• 50:08
  decisions where a minister can make a decision without it having to have been approved by cabinet
• 50:13
  formally. The environment minister has a lot of these decision powers. We've seen, um,
• 50:17
  10-year-old blipersack already start to use them from time to time. The resources minister does as
• 50:22
  well. There are some in financial related matters where both the treasurer and the finance minister
• 50:26
  have them also. And there are some in homophares, uncuincedently with portfolios that Scott Morrison has
• 50:32
  assumed, where that power exists. But generally speaking, these delegated decisions are quite micro
• 50:38
  in nature. They're small, they're particular to a topic. Now, yes, in theory, you would think a
• 50:45
  prime minister who gets to choose his or her ministry and delegate the portfolios could contact
• 50:50
  one of those ministers, tap them on the shoulder and say, hey, mate, it's important to me that we
• 50:54
  do it. I mean, they're regularly meeting for cabinet anyway. Exactly. I mean, how frequent
• 50:57
  is a cabinet meeting? It's frequently enough that you could say, oh, by the way, you know,
• 51:00
  this thing that's coming up with that offshore gas thing, we should have a chat about that,
• 51:03
  because really, there's, you know, there's a lot of electoral, but usually that doesn't happen,
• 51:09
  because usually that delegated authority where a minister doesn't need a cabinet sign off for a
• 51:14
  decision is, is, is, is small by nature, in particular, that you just trust your minister to do it.
• 51:19
  Sure. Generally speaking, generally speaking. Trust in Scott Morrison, the two words that,
• 51:24
  but most don't confuse that power, though, with what is most ministerial decision-making,
• 51:29
  which is that a minister wants to make a, a change in their portfolio, which is a bigger policy
• 51:34
  item. They don't have the power to do that on their own. They need to take it to cabinet.
• 51:39
  Cabinet needs to approve it, and even if it doesn't require legislation, cabinet approves it,
• 51:44
  and then they amend as, you know, they can make amendments that, that aren't required to be
• 51:48
  legislative amendments. I see. Or it requires legislation, in which case cabinet agrees to it,
• 51:54
  then once cabinet agrees, they take it to their own party room, and they hope that their party
• 51:59
  room agrees, then they take a department, they always get it through the lower house, because
• 52:02
  they have the majority, but then they have to negotiate it through the Senate, because
• 52:06
  the government of the day doesn't have the majority there. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay.
• 52:09
  And the gas project was one of the, the small bore things that ordinarily you would not have.
• 52:14
  So it's a bit like the prime minister, like overruling you on what wallpaper you have,
• 52:18
  or what couch you have in your office. Yeah. Or it's like this is not, so this is not your job.
• 52:21
  Like you're not supposed to be involved in these kinds of decisions. Or he gets in C1,
• 52:25
  his car to the airport, and he starts telling the driver what he thinks is the faster route,
• 52:29
  because it's peak out traffic. Yeah. It's a bit like the driver's like, let me do my job.
• 52:33
  So then let's talk about the response to this, and you know, the criticism of Anthony,
• 52:37
  so anything Albanese, the current prime minister, who's from the opposing party to the person
• 52:41
  we're talking about, he's from the central left party, the central right party lost, and he has
• 52:46
  announced a royal commission. Not a royal commission. It's an inquiry with a former high court judge,
• 52:53
  which is like the US Supreme Court, and she's overseen it. She's not seen as a particularly
• 52:58
  political high court appointment, so that, you know, most aren't, but she's certainly not,
• 53:02
  and she's a retired high court judge, you know, very esteemed therefore, and it's an inquiry
• 53:08
  rather than a royal commission. And what that means is that it doesn't quite have the unfettered
• 53:12
  powers of a royal commission. It can be a little bit cheaper. It doesn't have the power to
• 53:17
  compel witnesses, and this is a deliberate decision by Anthony Albanese. There was speculation that
• 53:22
  it would have the power to compel witnesses. My understanding was that the cabinet signed off on
• 53:27
  the prime minister having the right to include the power to compel witnesses in the way that he
• 53:32
  designed the inquiry, but he ultimately didn't do that. But what he did do is he deliberately picked
• 53:38
  someone of such eminence to head the inquiry, who was apolitical, if you like, that it would be
• 53:43
  very hard for Scott Morrison to refuse to cooperate, and Scott Morrison has already indicated,
• 53:49
  by the way, that he will cooperate. And also, there's already been a preliminary submission by,
• 53:54
  was it the solicitor general? Yeah, the solicitor general did an investigation just to
• 53:58
  basically said there was no crime committed. So there would be no real reason why Scott Morrison
• 54:02
  wouldn't, I mean, there's no reason for him to plead the fifth, because no, you know, whatever
• 54:05
  he's not going to judge. He's not going to judge. There's nothing illegal. No, he didn't do
• 54:09
  anything illegal according to the solicitor general, but it wasn't the fitting of the concept of
• 54:13
  responsible government as a political institutional concept in Australia. So this inquiry that the former
• 54:19
  high court judge is presiding over, it will now try to get to the bottom of who knew what and when
• 54:25
  and why does all this matter? And is this wise politics for the Labor Party? So, you know, I was
• 54:30
  texting with my friend, Waleed Ali, who is another political commentator here, who got
• 54:35
  copped a lot of flak last week for writing a piece in the age, which is Melbourne's broadsheet newspaper,
• 54:41
  well, not broadsheet anymore, but one of Melbourne's newspapers arguing that, you know, this is where
• 54:47
  where there's a political liability, basically, for the left to keep going after Scott Morrison
• 54:52
  and seem like it's litigating the the issues of the past. And this will not not be unfamiliar to
• 54:57
  people in the United States as well, who sort of, you know, ringing their hands about how much
• 55:01
  time do you spend about what Donald Trump did and how much time do you spend trying to create a
• 55:05
  strategy for the future and create a vision that people can get behind for an alternative way that
• 55:10
  the country can move forward. And, you know, really, all we needed to do was, you know, close the
• 55:15
  loophole about how this happens in the future and then move on with it. What's the inquiry going to
• 55:19
  reveal? I'm not sure that there's a need for an inquiry, even though I have all sorts of strong
• 55:24
  opinions about what violation this represented, and I believe that it should absolutely turn you
• 55:29
  Scott Morrison's legacy. I feel that very strongly because... Well, it will, and it has... Yeah, and
• 55:33
  any Prime Minister who does this and gets outed for having done it and done it secretly, I think,
• 55:38
  deserves to be trashed into infinitum. I was saying the other day, I suspect that the biggest
• 55:43
  loser from all this is Josh Friedenberg because if there was ever a hope that Friedenberg, the treasurer
• 55:48
  who lost his seat may have been able to make a comeback in politics in 10 years, 15 years after
• 55:52
  making a lot of money in the private sector coming back, you know, when the party is on its knees
• 55:57
  in the future and say, look, you know, I presided over this, you know, this, you know, is the
• 56:01
  energy minister, the treasurer, there was still a glimmer of that being possible. And I think after
• 56:06
  this him being so closely associated with a Prime Minister who was frankly corrupt is... And that,
• 56:12
  and that is why for him, I understand that he had a rather robust conversation with Scott
• 56:19
  Morrison. When Scott Morrison rang him to apologise for all of this in the aftermath, my understanding
• 56:24
  of that conversation is that it was not nearly as collegial as Scott Morrison tried to suggest it
• 56:29
  was in the one media conference that he's done post all of this being outed. But yeah, look, I don't
• 56:34
  think, well, he's wrong about that because I can see the political problems for Labour in having
• 56:40
  an inquiry. If they overegg the pudding, as it were, they'll be seen to be playing politics with
• 56:45
  this. Now, don't get me wrong. I would rather have an inquiry purely because I want to get to the
• 56:51
  bottom of who knew what and when and why, right? And that's the only way to do that. But politically
• 56:55
  for Labour, did they need to do it? Politically? No way. Institutionally, is it good to have the
• 57:02
  information that we will get from an inquiry? Yes. But they're two different questions. What's
• 57:06
  the information that we would get that we don't have? Well, we'll find out who in the office
• 57:09
  knew. We'll find out reasons why it was done beyond just a Facebook post, which is all we've
• 57:14
  really had from Scott Morrison about him trying to justify why he's done it. We'll have the kind
• 57:18
  of forensic questioning of why, from somebody as eminent as a former high court judge,
• 57:25
  presumably with Council assisting to be able to get to the bottom of these answers. Because
• 57:29
  for example, and I don't know this because we haven't had the inquiry yet, but I'm led to
• 57:35
  believe that there were certain people inside Scott Morrison's office who knew about this,
• 57:38
  staffers I'm talking about. And I'm led to believe that at least one of those staffers is now
• 57:43
  working for a very senior shadow minister of the same party now that they're in opposition.
• 57:48
  Now that is of relevance to my own. Politicians like to say staffers shouldn't be sort of
• 57:53
  brought into these things, but they should. The reason they should is because once upon a time,
• 57:58
  if a staffer did something wrong, a staffer to a minister, the minister resigned because that
• 58:02
  was how responsible government's supposed to work, right? They're an extension of the minister.
• 58:06
  But now often staffers lose their jobs to protect their bosses. That's when staffers do become
• 58:11
  relevant because they become part of the process. So I think that's relevant to get to the bottom of
• 58:16
  them. If your staff is a confidence, whose opinion you trust and whose counsel you value,
• 58:20
  then it matters if they were giving you stinking piles of shit as a part of it doesn't,
• 58:25
  and then they're going off elsewhere and they're party. And in Australia, more political staffers
• 58:30
  go on to become politicians than in most Westminster systems around the world. So it's not uncommon
• 58:35
  that a lot of these staffers, if there were a number who knew, could see themselves as politicians
• 58:39
  one day. So I think we deserve to know the answers to all about that. Have we had a massive
• 58:42
  inflation in staffing of parliamentarians? Well, the way it works is new governments tend to reduce it
• 58:49
  as some sort of promise from the campaign. And then it steadily increases during their life
• 58:54
  of government until another new government reduces it. But they never reduced it as much as it was
• 58:58
  at the reduction point of the previous government. So the answer to your question is yes, it just
• 59:02
  keeps going up and up. And are these all on the public payroll or are they personal staffers?
• 59:05
  No, they're on the public payroll. Tax pay are funded, even though they're entirely partisan.
• 59:09
  So they're not part of the public service. But that's the other part of it. Josh, the public service,
• 59:13
  what we need to know, who in the public service knew, I also think we need to get a bit worried.
• 59:18
  Why would anyone in the public service have known? Well, just procedurally, they might have been
• 59:21
  across it as part of it, or they might have been giving some professional advice each time,
• 59:26
  or maybe no one knew. But I'd like to know the answer to that. I'd also like to know a lot more
• 59:30
  about the government general, because we've got no intel at this point in time, whether he
• 59:36
  said anything, or was he like a trained baboon and all he did was just sign off on these things
• 59:41
  each time and not stop and pause for thought? Or did he actually privately tell the Prime Minister,
• 59:47
  I reckon you should publish this. I reckon you need to make this known to the minister that
• 59:51
  you're co-opting their portfolio. Maybe he said all of that, but we just don't know. I think that
• 59:56
  the public deserves to get an answer to those sort of questions. That's so true. And at what point do
• 1:00:00
  you ruminate about your role as the governor general, given that it's such a figurehead, given that
• 1:00:06
  it's such a toothless position, when there are scenarios that start bringing you up to the presser
• 1:00:13
  of the edge of what is normal, or what is constitutional, potentially. Do you talk to other
• 1:00:21
  former governors general? Do you talk to your counterparts in other countries? Do you ever put
• 1:00:25
  in a call to Buckingham Palace? Is there some point at which you go?
• 1:00:30
  It is kind of not usual. That's another reason for the inquiry and so far as the advice that it
• 1:00:35
  might provide, which is that you need more support around a governor general that's professional
• 1:00:40
  advice rather than just ceremonial. But for example, all the governor general need it. Look, maybe
• 1:00:45
  the governor general privately said to the prime minister, I reckon you should publish this. And if
• 1:00:49
  the prime minister didn't, the governor general then decided, well, it's not my role to do that. I
• 1:00:54
  have given that answer privately, so I have to leave it be from here. Maybe that's what happened.
• 1:00:59
  But if he didn't even do that, that concerns me, because all the governor general would have to
• 1:01:04
  do, which would not be breaking some sort of role, or even ceremonial role. Their ceremonial role is
• 1:01:09
  essentially just to follow the advice of the prime minister and cut ribbons, right? But they
• 1:01:14
  forever publish their diary of what they did the day before or what they're about to do the next day.
• 1:01:19
  It'd be very easy for a governor general to innocently, if they actually held concerns about
• 1:01:24
  the secrecy of this. A governor general very innocently would be allowed to just publish their
• 1:01:28
  diary from the day before. I cut this ribbon at this event. I lit this torch at that event. By the way,
• 1:01:34
  I signed the prime minister in as the co-trisurer. I mean, if they just, if they release that,
• 1:01:39
  I could tell you what, it's going to get some media. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. But that
• 1:01:43
  would be throwing the prime minister under the bus as well. It'd be the prime minister being thrown
• 1:01:50
  under the bus by his own actions with the governor general doing it cleverly. I would argue.
• 1:01:54
  It'd be interesting to see whether it's got Morrison would have seen it that way. How
• 1:01:57
  governor general appointed who gets to decide the prime minister solo? Essentially, yeah. I mean,
• 1:02:02
  look, there are party functions and so forth. There's no requirement of agreement from the
• 1:02:07
  opposition. No, no, no. The convention is that as a courtesy, the opposition would be informed.
• 1:02:15
  Yeah, but they're not required. And you mentioned that the former high court
• 1:02:20
  justice was Australia's highest court like the Supreme Court in the United States will be
• 1:02:24
  presiding over the inquiry. And you said this is a non-partisan figure. Why is Australia's high
• 1:02:28
  court so much less partisan than America's Supreme Court? How are our justices appointed?
• 1:02:33
  Well, our justices are also political appointments in so far as the attorney general makes the
• 1:02:39
  recommendation to cabinet and then makes the appointment subsequent to that. So whichever party
• 1:02:43
  happens to be in power at the time, gets to appoint the high court judge. They just know
• 1:02:47
  requirement for again, the opposition to approver to there's no sort of super majority. You need
• 1:02:52
  two-thirds of the senator or anything like that. And there's not even a convention actually
• 1:02:55
  when it comes to high court appointments that the opposition does get even told, frankly.
• 1:03:00
  So why has no party gone down the path that's just cherry picking political appointees?
• 1:03:05
  It's a political cultural issue. It's a distinction between Australia and the US. I mean,
• 1:03:09
  the process actually. We just had nice guys the whole time. Well, there's been
• 1:03:13
  there's been there are partisan appointments. Justice Callanan was a right wing partisan
• 1:03:18
  appointment and Justice Kirby was a left wing partisan appointment. But they were still appointed
• 1:03:22
  them. Now I'm testing your trivia. Well, I call it and I believe was a Howard appointment.
• 1:03:27
  And Kirby, I believe was a Keating appointment but I stand to be corrected on that. I'm pretty
• 1:03:32
  sure that's right. They were both unashamedly sort of if you're like left or right in their positioning
• 1:03:38
  but not partisan would be the way I'd put it. See, this is the distinction with our political
• 1:03:41
  culture to the US. They were still eminent members of the bar as well as the judiciary prior to their
• 1:03:47
  appointments. I think Callanan went straight from the bar to the bench and I think Kirby was already
• 1:03:52
  a state Supreme Court justice who then we might have been appeals court but then he got promoted
• 1:03:57
  to the high court. Their decisions and their judgments reflected their ideology of left and right
• 1:04:03
  but they weren't partisan in the way that they acted. And by and large, the Australian appointments
• 1:04:10
  look, yeah, they still vet them. They still try to pick people that they think are more conservative
• 1:04:15
  justices or more activist judicial actors. And then they appoint people that reflect that because
• 1:04:22
  the Labor Party is the more progressive party and the Liberal Party and the Nationals are the
• 1:04:26
  more conservative party. So they reflect that ideology but they're not as partisan. And the other
• 1:04:32
  factor which is a difference to the US which is probably as important. For the most part, we don't
• 1:04:38
  have the same controversial issues getting decided by courts. Yeah, like Roe vs Wade, it gets
• 1:04:43
  decided by parliaments rather than by courts whereas in the United States that if you're like
• 1:04:49
  has its own impact on the political culture which then impacts on who gets appointed to the judiciary.
• 1:04:53
  And is that because they've got such a they've got a bill of rights and they've got such a
• 1:04:57
  well articulated constitution that they're constantly falling back on that in the courts or is
• 1:05:01
  it also partly because legislative legislative legislatures in the United States have been so
• 1:05:06
  crap at doing their job of actually passing laws that it's sort of left up to the courts to be
• 1:05:11
  the only rule makers in the world. Yeah, a little a little bit of both I think. I mean, I do think
• 1:05:15
  that their constitutional arrangements and having a bill of rights lends itself to judicial activism
• 1:05:20
  of one former another and we don't have that so therefore it limits that. But so then once the court
• 1:05:26
  I suppose it's a self reinforcing cycle isn't it because once the court has has discovered some
• 1:05:31
  very esoteric right like Roe vs Wade which even if you're in favor of a woman's right to choose
• 1:05:37
  as I am, you can criticize as being a completely bonkers decision originally to discover in the
• 1:05:44
  constitution that there is a right to privacy that is not annunciated and then conclude that a
• 1:05:48
  woman has the right to privately kill a child when the eyes of the Christian right, you know,
• 1:05:55
  without interview. It's like the whole thing is kind of can be kind of topsy turvy and then once
• 1:05:59
  that's decided, then legislatures no longer have to deal with it for the next half century.
• 1:06:03
  Whereas in the whole rest of the world there was no other Western democracy that found a
• 1:06:09
  constitutional right to abortion. We just muddle it out together and find right laws.
• 1:06:15
  Yeah, and a lot of the difference as well comes down to that the American political culture is
• 1:06:21
  more activist even if you're on the conservative right and there are stronger powers between the
• 1:06:26
  commonwealth, well between the federal government I should say and between states. We've got federation
• 1:06:31
  as well but it's not the same and it's not as powerful as American federalism and so as a result
• 1:06:36
  you know the natural sort of protest elements and activism and and you know if you engage you can
• 1:06:42
  achieve outcomes culture of the US political bonfights that they have lends itself towards you
• 1:06:48
  know the sort of culture that leads to the kind of Supreme Court decision making and the interplay
• 1:06:53
  of politics and that and of course we also have a scenario in the US where in some jurisdictions judges
• 1:06:59
  are elected rather than appointed and then that also plays into that culture as well it brings
• 1:07:03
  populism into it whereas it tends to we've got more of the British in Australia when it comes to
• 1:07:08
  the role of courts versus the role of parliament. Yeah I mean electing judges and like electing
• 1:07:14
  sheriffs and things like that absolutely bonkers when you're if you're outside the United States.
• 1:07:17
  I also just want to pick your brain about our attitude towards having a stake in our governments
• 1:07:23
  and since we're talking about the sort of big future of democracy and the threats to democracy
• 1:07:29
  I suppose I've been in a Twitter spot this week which I'll have more to say about in another
• 1:07:34
  episode of the podcast in which I don't know if you've been following in the States this question
• 1:07:41
  about whether or not Facebook was tapped on the shoulder by the so Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's
• 1:07:47
  show and and said that the FBI had come to them before the last federal election and said just
• 1:07:54
  be on guard about Russian disinformation and misinformation then the Hunter Biden laptop
• 1:08:00
  story came by and it had all the hallmarks of Russian misinformation was like wait but you know
• 1:08:07
  the presidential candidates son lost a laptop it suddenly showed up and now it's in the hands of
• 1:08:11
  Rudy Giuliani Rudy Giuliani has all of this stuff so Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook turned down
• 1:08:17
  the volume on sharing of that information Twitter literally suspended the New York Post for having
• 1:08:23
  published the story this then became a huge right when talking point about you know about social
• 1:08:28
  media suppressing speech that could be deleterious to the chances of Trump's re-election
• 1:08:36
  subsequently people have been tweeting madly over the past week saying that it's clear now that
• 1:08:41
  the government would do anything to prevent Donald Trump from being elected and I said well what
• 1:08:49
  mean like what's the government in this like Donald Trump was the president at the time was
• 1:08:54
  Donald Trump as the head of state and the head of government conspiring to for what his own
• 1:09:00
  re-election and what's become clear in my various twos and throws with right wingers and
• 1:09:05
  trumpers in the states online is that they don't think of the government as comprising the head of
• 1:09:11
  state or the head of government they think of it as the apparatus they think of it as the apparatus
• 1:09:16
  they think of it as a shadowy cabal you know if they're more on the far right then they think of
• 1:09:21
  it as Jews and money people who are pulling strings with lobbyists wall street and so I suppose
• 1:09:30
  this is a question about if this is a question at all rather than around about the public's
• 1:09:34
  surface like they think that there's and there is indeed a bureaucratic state that keeps on churning
• 1:09:41
  that is basically the Pentagon you know Jewish money world domination people who are all
• 1:09:48
  intertwined with the public service and the bureaucratic state and that some even someone who tries
• 1:09:54
  to come in and smash it up like Donald Trump gets thwarted and thrown out of office by the by
• 1:10:00
  what they call the government but they're not using the word the government in any way that I
• 1:10:04
  use the term well I mean the the only part of that when you take the sort of crazy out of it
• 1:10:10
  that that that rings true but I think is a good thing that it rings true is that the apparatus of
• 1:10:17
  state protects the state and yes you can change it and governments do all the time depending on
• 1:10:25
  their political persuasion depending on the sort of crash or crash through style of leadership
• 1:10:30
  that they have in all the rest of it policy scripts that make adjustments but the state writ large
• 1:10:36
  is does it's a little bit like you know the train driver can make some it this isn't quite a
• 1:10:42
  perfect analogy I let me start by saying but the train driver can change the speed they can
• 1:10:47
  occasionally change track from here and there but they can't drive it the way you would just drive
• 1:10:53
  a car in a field and that's because the state and I think this is a good thing is built on depending
• 1:10:59
  on the country years decades hundreds of years of institutional settings which protect the
• 1:11:05
  citizens and the state and the nation state as well and America's got those features Australia's
• 1:11:11
  got those features Britain have more of those features than either of those two nations and
• 1:11:16
  and I think that's a good thing and I guess the problem is if you're all about smashing the state
• 1:11:21
  because you want radical change this is the same frustration that people of the radical right
• 1:11:26
  and the radical left feel when they butt up against the institutions the institutions are
• 1:11:31
  innately conservative okay and and and deliberately so because you you support change to an extent
• 1:11:38
  and those institutional settings are like the lanes that prevent people from moving too far out
• 1:11:44
  them now if someone like Donald Trump wanted to get in and smash the state up there are protections
• 1:11:49
  there which are regarded as all-time protections to some extent and we have as you know it's
• 1:11:54
  this is a different discussion but I used to have this discussion with my first-year
• 1:11:58
  politics students does one generation have the right to vote away the rights of the next generation
• 1:12:03
  so for example in a democracy do you have a right to vote in a communist or a fascist regime
• 1:12:10
  that takes an ethos or takes a policy to that election that they're going to abolish elections
• 1:12:15
  now I would argue no because you are abolishing rights of future generations it's a variation on
• 1:12:21
  environmentalist arguments when it comes to what you can and can't do with the vandalism for
• 1:12:25
  the future but you know this is one of the interesting debates now Australia did not ban the
• 1:12:30
  communist party the United States did for these sort of institutional reasons now Trump supporters
• 1:12:35
  aren't communist but they have the same institutional smash up attitudes I don't think that that's a
• 1:12:42
  bad thing that the state pushes back on that I think those institutional settings allow government
• 1:12:47
  to run no matter what and and part of this is also professionalism you know the bureaucracy of
• 1:12:53
  state allows the state to function even if we don't have politicians but politicians can then
• 1:12:58
  shape it in ways that are good and bad and that's why back in the day Thomas Jefferson he was the
• 1:13:03
  person who said if I've got a paraphrasing now but he said basically if I've only got a choice
• 1:13:08
  a binary choice between having politicians versus having journalists and the fourth estate I choose
• 1:13:13
  the journalists and the fourth estate that's because he recognized that the apparatus of government
• 1:13:17
  can function without the politicians but whether it's the state whether it's the politicians whether
• 1:13:22
  it's big business you want the fourth estate to hold them all to account for the way that they
• 1:13:27
  function I'll just I applaud all of that all of those sentiments and I would just add also the one
• 1:13:32
  thing that we forget about is the institutional expertise in the public services field of work so
• 1:13:40
  you know one thing that I think has is is a flaw in the American system is the extent to which you
• 1:13:45
  have a complete turnover of expertise with each administration and Americans are often not aware
• 1:13:50
  that you know you look at something like the pandemic or you know whether you agree or disagree
• 1:13:56
  with how various countries dealt with the pandemic what you want in a situation like that is a
• 1:14:01
  bunch of brainy people who've devoted their entire lives to thinking about what happens when
• 1:14:05
  pandemics take place and who devoted their lives to looking closely at the data of public health
• 1:14:10
  and various you know outbreaks and pathologies around the world in place who have jobs already
• 1:14:16
  who are on the government payroll and then they can you know launch into action and the only way
• 1:14:21
  you have that is by having this what Trumpers would call a deep state essentially right which is a
• 1:14:27
  public service that endures between governments and it doesn't matter who you vote in or who you
• 1:14:31
  vote out there's the wonk with that with his glasses on in the lab but when there's a little
• 1:14:35
  white coat advising whoever the minister is and the minister can change because we vote governments
• 1:14:40
  in and out but the public service the bureaucracy remains in place and in the states that's not that
• 1:14:46
  doesn't happen yeah much more partisan carve in and out depending on who's in power and the only
• 1:14:51
  chicken balance in the US tends to be that who is or isn't in power will vary between tears of
• 1:14:56
  government so you sort of end up having partisan checks only because the other side of got the
• 1:15:01
  power at the state level rather than at the national level or whatever it might be yeah but it's
• 1:15:06
  not as good a system you'd rather have those those independent or as far as possible independent
• 1:15:12
  public servants and public and experts in particular categories the yes minister and the
• 1:15:17
  yes prime minister parity from the BBC series from many many decades ago when you when you carve out
• 1:15:23
  the sort of the sexism and the ingrained constitution the ingrained conservatism and self-interest
• 1:15:28
  of Sir Humphrey and and co-burned and all the rest of them ultimately the bigger joke now
• 1:15:35
  is that they don't have as much power even in Western democracies as they once did in terms of
• 1:15:40
  that independence because it's it's a it's a lesser of evils to have that kind of independence I
• 1:15:45
  think we have a lot more of it as you point out in in a country like Australia than the United
• 1:15:49
  States does but we still don't have as much of it as we used to have and I think that's to our
• 1:15:53
  own detriment if you could make one tweak to Australian democracy what would it back oh wow one
• 1:15:58
  tweak yeah the the only thing I would probably think of is to extend and this is so minor that it
• 1:16:08
  sort of is a suggestion that I wouldn't make too many changes but the one tweak I would make
• 1:16:12
  would be to extend three year terms federally to four years probably just so that there's a little
• 1:16:17
  bit more room to move there without it being so popularized from one election to the next week
• 1:16:22
  up in a permanent campaign while I was saying that I was thinking would my one tweak if if I get to
• 1:16:27
  have that godlike power of Scott Morrison would it would it be just to change us to a republic I just
• 1:16:32
  quite like the idea of breaking from the monarchy but that's more symbolism thing yeah institutional
• 1:16:37
  changes I like compulsory voting I like preferential voting I like that we have proportional
• 1:16:43
  representation in the upper house as a check on the lower house I don't have a problem with
• 1:16:47
  equal representation state to state even though there are some negatives in that so the biggest
• 1:16:53
  change would actually be institutionally just going from three to four years culturally it's a
• 1:16:58
  harder question though because I would make a massive cultural shift that opened up the system
• 1:17:04
  of who goes into politics beyond what has become very much a catalyzation between the two major
• 1:17:09
  parties and that's why we've had the rise of the teal independence but that's it that doesn't
• 1:17:13
  have a one change right or two you're allowed to interpret the change however you want to if
• 1:17:17
  you want to wave your magic one and have everybody you know running for yeah I mean the
• 1:17:22
  I suppose are you pointing to maybe a less professionalisation of the political class like I mean
• 1:17:28
  that people should be able to be small business people for 25 years and then just run for parliament
• 1:17:32
  and then they can but that's that's like actual representatives of the community rather than
• 1:17:37
  and the problem is the how to I mean I guess it requires some sort of pre-selection change
• 1:17:41
  but it ultimately requires a cultural mindset shift change by the major parties because I don't
• 1:17:45
  like the idea that the guy that spent 10 years between the ages of 23 and 33 working their way
• 1:17:52
  up as a political staffer and that's all they've ever done they then low and behold easily win
• 1:17:57
  a pre-selection because they've spent that whole time as an insider also stacking branches
• 1:18:02
  and someone else who might be a woman rather than a 33 year old bloke and she might have actually
• 1:18:07
  worked in business or actually worked in the community or whatever it might be she she doesn't
• 1:18:11
  even bother to run for politics because she knows that she can't get a foot in the door
• 1:18:16
  and that's not improved by the quota system of the labour party like I've always been in favour
• 1:18:20
  of quotas I've written a lot about it one of the few people on the sort of sender right who does
• 1:18:23
  that but that that fixes labour not having enough women in parliament but it doesn't change the
• 1:18:30
  type of person who goes in including the type of woman because you know labour is better on gender
• 1:18:36
  no question but both sides of politics are as bad as it at it being insiders in their club
• 1:18:42
  that go in yeah right anything you want to plug Peter my new book what's it called victory
• 1:18:49
  victor it'll be out I'm about to say next month it'll be out at the very beginning of October
• 1:18:54
  and it's we we we got it's with Wayne Erington who I always write with and it's about Anthony
• 1:18:59
  Albanese he's winning at the election and he gave us hours of interview time the national secretary
• 1:19:04
  who ran the labour campaign gave us lots of interview time we spoke to people on both sides
• 1:19:08
  the now treasurer you know you name it all the rest of them Penny Wong and it's a real inside as a
• 1:19:13
  count there was a book called The Victory by Pamela Williams don't get that one well no that was
• 1:19:18
  back in 1996 okay you can get that one now yeah yeah so we we figure that there's enough time as
• 1:19:22
  passed a quarter of a century we can steal the title but leave the the out it's not very good
• 1:19:28
  Peter great to talk to you thanks for your time thanks for having
• 1:19:37
  uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Zeps on Twitter and
• 1:19:42
  Instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful your mind humble your enemies generous
• 1:19:48
  and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable