New details are emerging about the role played by advisers in Scott Morrison’s office and the public service when the former PM moved to bypass cabinet government and secretly take on other ministers’ powers.
There have been calls for senior advisers to face scrutiny about the role they played as Mr Morrison restructured a system of responsible government in ways later described as fundamentally undermining it.
But one top Morrison aide has told The New Daily that the blame lies with the prime minister’s department which, they alleged, was offered a chance to provide input into the ministry move before it happened, but chose instead to stay silent and carry out instructions.
I spy
Phil Gaetjens, the former Liberal adviser handpicked to lead that branch of the public service, did not return a phone call on Wednesday.
Now the role of the controversial head of Australia’s intelligence services, and former Liberal adviser, Andrew Shearer, is coming under scrutiny.
Records released this week show Mr Morrison was near-constantly holding meetings via a secretive cabinet committee of which he was both chair and sole member.
Mr Shearer was said to have been present at most of the Cabinet Office Policy Committee’s first year of meetings while working as the former PM’s adviser on cabinet matters and before his 2020 promotion to the intelligence agency,
The Office of National Intelligence (ONI) boss did not respond to written questions from The New Daily on Wednesday asking if he had also advised the former PM on his other major contravention of cabinet: the secret takeover of his ministers’ responsibilities.
The committee, whose agenda was set by the PM and Mr Shearer, was revealed to have been one of the most active bodies in the government and met 739 times during the previous Parliament, despite Mr Morrison being its only member.
The arrangement was deeply unconventional and allowed Mr Morrison to declare unrelated conversations officially secret under laws relating to cabinet confidentiality.
An unlikely rise
Minutes of the committee’s meetings between 2019 and 2022 released in response to a freedom-of-information from The Guardian showed that some 665 sets of minutes remained unaccounted for.
New information about the committee’s role conflicts with the insider account of the Morrison government’s COVID management published recently by News Corp journalists Geoff Chambers and Simon Benson
“It is a strategic group – a cabinet think-tank – that meets on a needs-only basis in the face of significant policy decisions or an unfolding crisis,” the pair wrote of the committee’s function.
ONI did not respond to questions about whether its director-general’s link to a committee seemingly designed to bypass cabinet government was compatible with public service values and traditions.
Mr Shearer was known as the architect of another forum designed during the Morrison years, national cabinet.
His rise to the top of Australia’s impartial intelligence services came despite a history of political partisanship including a senior role at a Liberal aligned think tank which had often taken aim at the top public servants he now counts as peers.
Defining notes
After serving as an adviser to John Howard Mr Shearer came to the foreign policy establishment via a Victorian premier’s office where he was deputy head of international engagement.
That led back to the Prime Ministers suite under Tony Abbott after which he was made one of the new intelligence body’s deputy leaders by Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Morrison put him in the top spot after about a year in the cabinet adviser’s job.
Some Canberra columnists showed their knack for spotting talent in items about a young staffer on the rise including when wrongly predicting he would become ambassador to the United States.
But Mr Shearer’s critics tried to link service as national security adviser to Mr Abbott with some of the latter’s spectacular foreign policy contributions including an idea to send Australian troops to Nigeria to rescue a group of kidnapped local schoolgirls.
Virginia Bell, the former High Court judge leading the inquiry into the multiple ministries affair, called for public submissions last week.
Mr Morrison’s office was contacted for comment on Wednesday.
