Morrison had five secret portfolios including treasury, home affairs

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has received advice that Scott Morrison was secretly appointed to five additional portfolios while he was prime minister in 2020 and 2021.

Albanese said at a press conference on Tuesday morning Morrison was sworn into the health, finance, home affairs, treasury and industry and science portfolios.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Scott Morrison appointed himself to five departmental portfolios.

“This is a sad indictment of not just Mr Morrison, but all those cabinet colleagues of his who sat back and allowed this to happen,” Albanese told reporters at Parliament House in Canberra.

“It’s undermined our democracy. It’s an attack on the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy as we know it. And not just Mr Morrison, but others, who were involved in this, need to be held to account.”

Albanese said Morrison created a cabinet committee one person – himself – which allowed him to make the appointments.

Morrison said before the press conference he took on the resources, finance and health portfolios because of the pandemic.

“We had to take some extraordinary measures to put safeguards in place,” Morrison told Sydney radio station 2GB on Tuesday morning.

“Importantly, none of these, in the case of the finance and the health portfolios, ever were required to be used. They were there as a safeguard, they were there as a redundancy because both the powers in those portfolios weren’t overseen by cabinet, and the ministers themselves, in both cases, had powers that few ministers in our federation’s history were having.”

More to come.

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