The Morrison government has appointed more than 30 former Coalition ministers, MPs, staffers and donors to taxpayer-funded jobs in the last six months alone.
Scott Morrison and senior ministers have defended the appointments, but Labor has argued it’s a case of history repeating after a large number of partisan appointments before the 2019 election and stacking of the administrative appeals tribunal with 85 people linked to the Coalition since 2013.
On Friday evening the energy minister, Angus Taylor, reappointed his former energy adviser John Hirjee to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency board along with Anna Matysek, an economist and co-founder of BAEconomics, which has been critical of Labor’s climate policies.
Taylor also appointed Matt Howell, the outgoing chief executive of Tomago Aluminium, Australia’s biggest power consumer, to the board of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Although not a Liberal, Howell has vocally backed the government’s investment in the Kurri Kurri gas power plant.
Earlier, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, accused the government of delaying calling the election to allow it to “continue to make these extraordinary appointments to the AAT [Administrative Appeals Tribunal], to the Productivity Commission, to the Arts Council”, meaning the Australia Council for the Arts.
“I mean, surely there are now no more Liberal former state MPs, federal MPs, local councillors or mayors to appoint to these bodies. Like enough, call the election, let the Australian people decide,” he said.
Last week, the attorney general, Michaelia Cash, appointed six people with Liberal links to the AAT, which conducts merits reviews of government decisions.
These included former NSW minister Pru Goward, a former chief of staff to Morrison and two former Western Australian state politicians who lost their seats at the 2021 election.
Don Morris, a former Tasmanian legislative council member, and Donna Petrovich, a former Liberal MP, were reappointed to the tribunal at the same time.
Cash has defended the appointments, saying that 15 of the 19 new appointments this round were of legally qualified people.
On Wednesday, Cash told 6PR radio that “people who have served in government have a good understanding … of the way government works, they understand legislation”.
“Appointments need to be made. This was the time to make these appointments. It just happens to coincide with an election.”
Former NSW minister Don Harwin was appointed to the Australia Council board.
The former federal minister John McVeigh was appointed to the Modernising Murray River Systems technical panel, while the head of the oil and gas lobby APPEA’s Andrew McConville became the chief executive of the the Murray Darling Basin Authority.
In April, the former federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson was appointed as a member of the council of the Australian War Memorial.
The Morrison government appointed Timothy Longstaff, a former senior adviser to Simon Birmingham, as a non-executive director of Snowy Hydro Limited and reappointed Scott Mitchell, a former WA Liberal government staffer, as a non executive director. Both are three-year appointments.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, appointed his mental health and suicide prevention adviser, Michael Gardner, as the head of the National Suicide Prevention Office.
Laura Inman, who reportedly attended a Liberal fundraiser while a Commonwealth Bank director, was appointed as a non‑executive director to Australia Post board for a three-year term.
Penny Fowler, a donor to the Liberal party in 2004, was appointed as chair of the National Portrait Gallery board.
Appointments made in March include:
The treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s former adviser Martin Stokie as a Productivity Commissioner, while Alex Robson, Malcolm Turnbull’s former economist adviser, became the government thinktank’s deputy chair – both for a five-year term
The former Liberal premier of Victoria Denis Napthine, who was made chair of the National Disability Insurance Agency board
The foreign minister Marise Payne’s top adviser, Justin Bassi, was chosen to lead the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, with former deputy prime minister John Anderson and former justice minister Michael Keenan appointed as members of its council
Timothy McEvoy, a family court judge who did pro bono legal work for Tony Abbott in 2013, was appointed to the federal court
In January, former Liberal senator Helen Kroger was reappointed to a five-year term from July as the Australian Fisheries Management Authority Commission chairperson.
In December:
The former Liberal party Victorian branch vice-president Caroline Elliott was appointed to the board of the National Film and Sound Archive along with Lucy Brogden, the wife of former NSW opposition leader John Brogden, both for a three-year term.
Fiona Nash, the former Nationals deputy leader, became the first regional education commissioner
Scott Ryan, the former Liberal senator and Senate president, was appointed as high commissioner to Canada
Rebecca Frizelle, a donor to the LNP in 2020, was nominated to join the Brisbane 2032 organising committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games
In November, the Morrison government appointed conservative legal academic Lorraine Finlay as the human rights commissioner, one of three appointments since 2013 that could trigger a downgrade to the Australia’s Human Rights Commission global accreditation.
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the threatened downgrade was “a damning indictment on the Morrison government”.
“The key concern that led to the threatened downgrade was the refusal of the Morrison government to adopt a transparent and independent process for appointing commissioners, similar to its undermining of the AAT with its constant stacking of Liberal mates,” he said.
In October the former Liberal science and industry minister Ian Macfarlane was appointed for a three-year term to the science agency the CSIRO’s board.
Warwick Smith, a minister in the Howard government, was appointed for a three-year term as the chair of the council of the National Museum of Australia.
On Wednesday, the prime minister defended the appointments, telling reporters in Sydney the government “makes appointments all the time”.
“We make appointments regularly and Labor people have been appointed to the exact same positions that you’re talking about over the course of our term,” Morrison said, citing only one example – the appointment of former minister Gary Gray as ambassador to Ireland.
“These people are qualified for the jobs. They’ll do a great job and I look forward to them doing a good job.”
