The solicitor-general’s recent finding that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s furtive accrual of ministerial portfolios “fundamentally undermined” the principles of responsible government has drawn attention to the precarity of democracy. In seeking to safeguard our democracy, we must consider the extent to which Australians’ long-standing apathy about our democratic system allowed Morrison to treat it with such contempt.
Democracy is under threat around the world. Donald Trump’s autocratic populism and the attempted coup at the Capitol in January 2021 are familiar to Australians, but so-called “strongmen” have been white-anting democratic conventions in countries including the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Venezuela and Brazil for the past two decades.
