The past seven days of the Morrison ministries scandal have exposed the governor-general’s office to a rare bout of public examination, with questions over its role in allowing Scott Morrison’s power grab to remain secret.
Transparency? Secrecy? The governor-general’s office has forthrightly rejected that it had any obligation to ensure Morrison shared his secret news with others. At the same time, it has now said it would back change.
“The office supports a more transparent process to ensure that any appointments made under section 64 [of the constitution] are made public,” a spokesman said yesterday.
“Noting that these reporting responsibilities are the prerogative of the government of the day, the office will await the recommendations of the current process [the review ordered by Prime Minister Albanese] before commenting further.”
Whatever the findings of the review, the governor-general’s office is not accustomed to explaining its actions publicly. Indeed it is exempted by legislation from needing to respond to FOI requests, other than on routine administrative questions.
The question was clarified in a High Court ruling in 2013. A Brisbane nurse, Karen Kline, attempted to discover the truth of how an Order of Australia award is made but ran up against a wall of secrecy. Kline had nominated a man called Lawrence Laikind for his record of fighting disability discrimination. Laikind, who is vision-impaired, had just the sort of qualifications and achievements you might want in awards presented to an everyday hero. Yet he did not receive one — precisely why is not known.
Kline asked the Council of the Order of Australia’s secretariat for documents, processes and guidelines that informed its decision, but it refused to give any. Her freedom of information request was refused. She then took the case to the Federal Court and ultimately, in 2013, to the High Court where she was represented pro-bono by Ron Merkel QC.
The High Court ruled that documents relating to the governor-general’s “substantive powers and functions” were excluded from disclosure by operation of s 6A(1) of the FOI Act.
The Order of Australia is core business for the governor-general’s office. As Crikey‘s legal expert Michael Bradley explained it, the granting of an honour is “a prerogative of the crown, exercising a power [the Queen’s] granted herself under the terms of the instrument by which she created the order. She’s delegated the power to the G-G but it’s still hers.”
The opaqueness of decision-making in the governor-general’s office — whoever occupies it — has made it vulnerable to political exploitation, especially in the granting of honours. It also puts it at odds with the transparency demanded of executive government.
How defensible does that remain in 2022?
The Morrison secret ministries saga may have breathed new life into the republican movement, which can point not only to the impotence of the office of the governor-general but to the wall of secrecy which surrounds it.
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