‘I was steering the ship in a tempest’: former Australian PM defends secret ministerial roles

Scott Morrison, the former Australian prime minister, has said he will not resign from parliament after the revelation that he had appointed himself secretly to five government ministries, defending his decision to keep the news concealed because, he said, he never exercised the powers he had.

- Josh Butler

At a press conference in Sydney yesterday, Morrison, ex-leader of the conservative Liberal party, struck a defiant tone and said he would remain as a member of parliament, despite calls – some even from inside his own party – for him to quit.

“I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations that would be unforeseen, that would enable me to act in the national interests,” he said of his decision to appoint himself to some of the most powerful portfolios in government during the pandemic. “I didn’t consider it at the time, given everything else that was going on and the other priorities we were dealing with, that it was a matter that needed to be raised at that point. If I needed to use the powers then I would have disclosed them with the minister.”