Good morning. A transparency advocate has said the body established by Scott Morrison with only one permanent member – himself – was “an abuse of process”. Whistleblower Richard Boyle has alleged the tax office blocked him from helping individuals and one senior staff member said “I am sick of taxpayers threatening suicide”. And Donald Trump’s own legal team has said he could be indicted over the investigation into his retention of government secrets.
Scott Morrison’s secretive cabinet committee of one permanent member appears to have met hundreds of times in the last term of parliament, documents released under freedom of information have revealed. The cabinet office policy committee (COPC) – of which Morrison was listed as the only permanent member – created 739 sets of minutes from meetings, the information released by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) showed. It has sparked fresh warnings from the former senator Rex Patrick that the body was an “abuse of process”, and prompted calls to release its documents, or to expand the inquiry into Morrison’s multiple ministries, as proposed by the Greens.
