Coalition MPs finally discover a political norm they don’t like being trashed
How did it take Coalition MPs so long to work out Scott Morrison couldn't be trusted with political norms and conventions?
Coalition MPs, it seems, do have some standards when it comes to political norms and politicians engaging in deception — but only when they’re the victims.
Normally the passage into opposition elicits a remarkable transformation in former government ministers. Having been passionate in their loathing of transparency and accountability as ministers, and committed to providing as little information as possible, they become ardent advocates of parliamentary scrutiny and supporters of institutions designed to limit the exercise of executive power. All, naturally, in aid of political attacks on the government that replaced them.
Unusually, Coalition MPs are now appalled that it was their own government keeping them in the dark and engaging in the trashing of norms, in the form of Scott Morrison’s Jim’s Mowing approach to ministerial roles.
Most of the former ministers of the Morrison government must be wondering whether they too were on the list of ministers who secretly had the prime minister as their ministerial buddy — a list already long enough with Greg Hunt (another glorious footnote to that splendid political career), Mathias Cormann (whose opinion of Morrison couldn’t have sunk any further anyway), Keith Pitt and Angus Taylor, although in Taylor’s case you can’t blame Morrison for thinking he had to play the equivalent role to the carny guy who helps the little kids drive the dodgems. Today we learnt that Josh Frydenberg and Karen Andrews also had Morrison as their silent — very silent — partner, and perhaps Anne Ruston at Social Services too.
Most aggrieved, naturally, are the Nationals, who learn that one of their own was the victim of Morrison’s dial-a-ministry: the aptly named Pitt who was too fossil fuel even for Morrison’s coal-flavoured taste, and seemingly committed to ensuring that a swathe of Liberal MPs on the NSW Central Coast and Sydney beach suburbs lost their seats as a result of the PEP11 gas drilling proposal — a rare offshore gas project unbeloved of the Coalition.
All of these complainants had no issue with Morrison trashing other political norms, or his routine lying to voters. Only when it came their turn to be the object of those deeply embedded traits of his political character have they decided he went too far.
None of them cavilled when Morrison trashed other longstanding norms and conventions. No one objected to the appointment of a veteran Liberal staffer to head Treasury and then Prime Minister and Cabinet, or to Morrison’s demotion of the public service to a policy implementation unit. They had no problems with the stacking of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Billion-dollar grant programs used for election pork-barrelling were of no moment. Smearing the partner of an alleged sexual assault victim neither here nor there; lying to Parliament irrelevant, misleading international leaders and leaking their messages for political gain a trifle. And no one ever batted an eyelid at the torrent of lies that poured from Morrison’s mouth.
Did the penny drop then that this was a man with contempt for the basic conventions and informal rules that help regulate any democracy? Seemingly not — that moment had to await Coalition MPs joining the rest of us as the suckers of ScoMo.
It’s a legitimate question, because the Coalition has been in the norm-trashing business for a very long time. Abandoning John Howard’s support for a comprehensive emissions trading scheme after 2007 (along with a commitment to free market solutions). Setting up spurious royal commissions into their opponents. Sacking public servants for doing their jobs. Blocking information about migration operations. Establishing an illegal welfare debt scheme. Using the AFP to raid journalists and the Labor Party to hunt down embarrassing leaks.
The mask had been half off since Tony Abbott became leader and the goal of securing power no matter what the cost to conventions, norms and the customs of Australian politics became paramount. The side that once preached conservatism and hectored others about standards and civility, that patiently explained that well-tried and tested institutions and rules should not be changed lightly, would readily chuck all that in the bin for a chance at power.
Scott Morrison merely pulled that mask off completely and showed the face of power over any principle.
POLITICS EDITOR @BERNARDKEANE
Bernard Keane is Crikey's political editor. Before that he was Crikey's Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.