Monte Irvine: I’ve been joined on the phone now by New South Wales Labor Senator Mr Tim Ayres. Good morning, Senator. 

Tim Ayres, Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for Manufacturing: Oh, g’day Monte. Good morning, to your listeners.

Monte Irvine: Senator, what a big week in politics, again, again! But what we – we’re still going to touch on what is happening with the revelations of Scott Morrison when he was Prime Minister, because it does sort of feed into what we are talking about, which was industry grants and how they were meted out, if you like, by the previous Government. 

Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing: Yeah, well, it’s been an extraordinary week, hasn’t it? These revelations are really hard, I think, for Australians to, you know, to get their head around. So, for any of our listeners who haven’t been following this, what’s been revealed and admitted to by the Prime Minister is that over the course of the last term, that he had himself secretly sworn into ministries held by other Ministers in Cabinet, that he had himself sworn in unbeknownst to the most part to his Cabinet colleagues. So, he was simultaneously the Prime Minister, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry, the Minister for Resources – the list goes on. And it appears that Mr Morrison had himself sworn into these roles so that he could exercise the powers that those Ministers held under the various acts that they administered. 

Now, the Ministers didn’t know. His Cabinet didn’t know. The Parliament didn’t know. And the Australian people didn’t know, because Mr Morrison kept it a secret, which is an extraordinary breach of the conventions, what we call the Westminster conventions. I know it sounds very grand, but really the formal and informal rules that people in positions of power in a democracy are supposed to abide by in order to keep the democracy functioning and to mean that too much power doesn’t rest in the hands of one person and that there’s transparency. 

You can’t have, as Malcolm Turnbull indicated last week, you can’t – you know, transparency is a key part of democracy. You can’t have a proper democratic process if people don’t know who is exercising authority and, in this case, Mr Morrison’s secrecy and his utter commitment to centralising power in his own hands meant that people during the course of the term didn’t know who was really making decisions. It’s an absolute abuse of power and an absolutely extraordinary set of revelations.

Monte Irvine: And just to be clear about this, if the former Prime Minister had actually come out and said, “look, I’m being – I’m going to go in as an Assistant Minister in these portfolios to help because we’re in under extraordinary circumstances”, was actually public about it, no one would have thought anything about it. Prime Ministers have held secondary ministries throughout Australian political history. We’ve seen that in so many different cases, but it’s the fact that it’s the secrecy and it was done behind everyone’s back without announcing it; that’s the issue, isn’t it? 

Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing: Well, there’s a series of issues tied to that. Where to begin? The first, of course, is the secrecy. If you haven’t got anything to hide, why keep it a secret? Every other decision or appointment of this kind is publicly announced. There has never been a situation where they haven’t been announced. And you are right; it certainly would have made a big difference had Mr Morrison announced it. 

But this idea that his justification for this that somehow this was required because of the COVID 19 crisis, I mean, that doesn’t really stand up to any examination. John Curtin served as Australia’s Prime Minister during the Second World War without ever swearing himself in, secretly or otherwise, into the portfolios held by the Ministers in his Cabinet. Why? Because, firstly, he had confidence in his Cabinet. Secondly, there are absolutely constitutional legal arrangements that cover what happens if a Minister gets ill or needs to be replaced. This can be dealt with, as Mr Morrison proved, by the stroke of a pen. 

This is very, very difficult to explain, very murky. And really, it’s another illustration of how much the standards of government were debauched by the previous government and how centralised power became in the Office of Prime Minister and how it underscores why it is that, you know, with all of the sorts of rorted grant funds and all the activity that was really in the interests of the Liberal Party, not in the public interests of Australians, that’s why, you know, so much confidence in government and politics has been undermined. It’s why we’re we went to the election with a commitment to introduce a fair dinkum National Integrity Commission. 

We’ll receive a report from the Solicitor General on this episode today and if there’s more steps that need to be taken to protect our democracy from these kinds of self interested attacks, we’ll take them. Australians want to see their democracy protected and cleaned up and we’re determined to do it.

Monte Irvine: Just speaking further on what you’re talking about there with grants and stuff, The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Mr Morrison had the final say on $828 million worth of industry grants and in particular to the Modern Manufacturing Initiative scheme. Now, he’s come out and said that the only way that he exercised any of the additional authority that he got from being sworn in, into the Manufacturing and Industry portfolio, was that he put a stop to the PEP 11 offshore drilling exercise, but he also had the final say on this $800 million scheme, and he left it to pretty much to the election before he announced the money being given to different industries when those decisions were made a lot earlier. Can you explain to us, first of all, what are these grants? What were they used for? But also, what’s going to be the repercussions of this being politicised? 

Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing: Well, thanks, Monte. I mean, I take that in two parts, really. Firstly, these grants were designed to support Australian industry, as part of the previous government’s $1.5 billion commitment to grants for industry to support new technologies and to develop Australian industrial capability. Now, Australian Labor has gone to the election with a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, ten times the program of the previous government. You know, we’re absolutely committed to having a – this is the largest ever industry policy initiative of any government to rebuild Australian industry and rebuild Australian manufacturing. The previous government’s smaller grants program was there designed to support industry. 

But what’s happened here is that the grants were taken under the control of the Prime Minister, which is very unusual, and they were announced really just on the eve of the election. And it’s just another illustration of how the government – the previous government, the Morrison Government, saw all these grants programs just through the prism of partisan politics. Why on earth were these projects held up by Mr Morrison until right on the eve of the election? It was so that at the very least Mr Morrison controlled the announcements. 

Now, we saw what happened with previous grant schemes where grant money was misused to go into seats, into electorates, that were being targeted by the Morrison Government during the election from the sports rorts grants through to the commuter car park grants through to the regional funds where, you know, regional sporting facilities were targeted in electorates – repurposed, taking them out of country towns and putting them into the big city. I mean, all of these grant funds were rorted, you know, in the interests of the Liberal Party, and this is just another example of a scheme being, you know, centralised again in the Office of the Prime Minister. And as has been indicated in that article, we’re reviewing all of these grant arrangements and having a closer look at this round. It’s just another example of the Morrison Government treating these grants as if they are their money, not public money.

Monte Irvine: There has been a little bit of criticism come out from the Opposition, particularly from Barnaby Joyce yesterday on Insiders where he’s basically saying, “well, you know what, we’re out of government, the Labor Party won, they’re still going on about what happened with Scott Morrison, well, he’s no longer the Prime Minister he’s just the Member for Cook now, just get on to the business of governing.” Is it time – it’s been a week now  –  is it time for the Government to go, “Well, you’ve done the wrong thing, we’re getting an investigation done, let’s move forward and concentrate on what we need to do to help the Australian people”? 

Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing: Well, it’s not going to be that easy for Mr Joyce and Mr Morrison to escape accountability. I watched Barnaby Joyce’s interview yesterday. He tried to defend the indefensible. His real answer when asked when he’d learnt of these secret appointments that Mr Morrison secretly appointed himself to his Cabinet Ministers’ portfolios, his real answer that came through was that he didn’t reveal it because he wanted to protect his secret deal between the National Party and the Liberal Party, which is all about ministerial positions, about jobs that matter to them and nothing to do with the jobs that matter to people in country towns. It was an extraordinary interview yesterday. We’re not going to be distracted by all of this. We’ve got to ensure that on one hand accountability is delivered here, that we learn the lessons from this period of maladministration, and we take the steps that are necessary to protect Australian democracy from future people who might try to centralise power, do secret deals. 

We’re going to continue to act in terms of a Federal Integrity Commission and all the kinds of reforms that are required, but we’re not going to focus on the other issues that matter. We’ve got the Jobs and Skills Summit coming up on 1st and 2nd of September. We’ve got a series of other important reforms and initiatives going on. We are taking the process of working through the first months of this Government in a careful and methodical way, acting in the interests of Australians. So, we’re not going to be distracted from that by all of this, but nor can Mr Morrison and Mr Joyce – nor can they expect to escape accountability for these flagrant breaches of absolutely basic democratic norms.

Monte Irvine: Do you believe that or do you think it is possible – just putting a political strategist hat on here for a second, do you think it’s possible that the reluctance of Peter Dutton from asking Scott Morrison to resign from Parliament, to get out of Parliament altogether, could be a lot to do with their current approval ratings and the possibility of losing Cook as one of their seats, the possibility of it going to a Teal seat, a Teal member if it went to a by election? 

Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing: Well, I’m not going to give Mr Dutton political advice over the radio. I mean, I just say this is a mess, an utter mess, for Mr Morrison and Mr Dutton. What’s really required from the new Leader of the Opposition is clarity here. The first question is: what did he know and when did he know it? The second question is: why didn’t those members of the Opposition who were then in government, when they found out, why wasn’t this called out? Why wasn’t there a public response at the time and demand that these issues be made public? You know, Mr Pitt and others knew all about this and kept it a secret from the Australian people. And why hasn’t Mr Dutton called on Mr Morrison to resign? There is no excuse for this behaviour, no excuse for Mr Morrison’s behaviour, but no excuse for Mr Dutton and any members of the previous government who knew – no excuse for them keeping it a secret and not acting.

Monte Irvine: All right, Senator, we’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time. I do appreciate it. 

ENDS