Scott Morrison should face “severe political consequences” for his secret multiple ministries, the deputy prime minister has said.
Richard Marles made the comments on Tuesday morning ahead of the release of the solicitor general’s legal advice which is expected to show Morrison’s actions were lawful but breached conventions of cabinet government.
Marles suggested a further inquiry could consider Morrison’s actions and closing a loophole that allows ministers to be appointed to administer portfolios without public disclosure.
Marles said it was clear “Morrison treated firstly the Australian people with complete contempt, by not making transparent the decisions he was taking in respect of who was running Australia at that point in time, but he’s treated his own colleagues with contempt”.
“As we go forward, whatever the legal advice, there needs to be some political consequence for a person who has flouted the, really, the Westminster cabinet system so completely,” he told ABC News Breakfast.
Marles said the government “needs to hear from the opposition” and its leader, Peter Dutton, about what the political consequence should be, adding that it needs to be a “severe consequence”.
Morrison has faced calls from shadow home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, to quit parliament, while Liberal MP Bridget Archer has also urged him to consider his position.
The Greens and crossbench MPs have pushed for Morrison to be referred to parliament’s privileges committee.
Doubts have been raised by constitutional experts including Anne Twomey about whether the former prime minister could be sanctioned given there is no standing order enforcing the convention to update parliament of ministerial changes.
Marles said the government wants “to make sure the lessons are learned from this so it never happens again … to make sure that government, as we go forward, is undertaken in a completely transparent way”.
Marles told Radio National “if there are loopholes which need to be closed here, and they will be closed”.
Marles said any inquiry would investigate Morrison as a “starting point” but did not rule out that it could consider the role of public servants and the governor general “subsequently to that”.
On Monday the office of the official secretary to the governor general supported calls for “a more transparent process” around ministerial appointments, but defended its role by noting there was “no secret or conspiracy” in following convention not to publicise them.
“How these appointments are communicated is the prerogative of the government of the day,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier Marles said he understood why Christine Holgate, the former Australia Post chief executive who was investigated by the finance department while Morrison was secretly the joint finance minister, was “completely unsettled” by what had happened, but did not endorse calls to reopen that inquiry.
Marles said Holgate’s complaint was “an example of the problems that occur when you have got a person who is secretly administering five separate departments and the country doesn’t know about it”.
