What’s in a word? Plenty, when it comes to public servants

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What should people think when a public servant tells colleagues the swearing in of a prime minister into a portfolio is “unnecessary”?

One of the challenges over the better part of the past week for any reader of the report by former High Court judge Virginia Bell into former prime minister Scott Morrison’s ‘secret squirrel’ portfolios is to understand why fairly understated, clear, and unconfrontational language appears to have been ignored.

Lawyers have a way with words – it’s part of their training — and for the word ‘unnecessary’ to be used in the context of giving Morrison additional powers to administer health is quite something.

Reference should be made at this point to correspondence cited by Bell in her report from David Lewis. Lewis is a general counsel specialising in constitutional matters in the Attorney-General’s Department and in one e-mail referred to by Bell he described the move to swear Morrison into health as “it does seem a bit like overkill” and in another communication, he described it as seeming “unnecessary”.

Morrison was ultimately sworn into that portfolio and four others. There was also the sixth Morrison was entertaining adding to that collection.

Let’s get back to the words used by Lewis and Bell herself.

Some might look at the word ‘unnecessary’ and suggest that it is merely an observation made in passing by a public servant as in something is ‘unnecessary’ but it will be done anyway.

It is plausible, however, to look at this more critically in the context of the Bell inquiry into the Morrison instance and question whether this was a public servant asking quite appropriately why the government was wasting everybody’s time.

There were existing mechanisms and processes that could have been used to swear a minister in should somebody be incapacitated. It did not require a prime minister to have their hand on the rudder of Health, Finance, Home Affairs, Treasury and Resources along with somebody else.

Bell had this to say on the matter of appointment to Health and Finance.

“The appointments, however, were unnecessary. If Mr Hunt or Mr Cormann had become incapacitated and it was desired to have a senior minister exercise the Health Minister’s expansive human biosecurity emergency powers or the Finance Minister’s significant financial authorities, Mr Morrison could have been authorised to act as Minister for Health or Minister for Finance in a matter of minutes,” Bell said.

It is open for a reader of the evidence presented by Bell in her report to question why the opinions of senior public servants with relevant knowledge and experience in law were effectively ignored.

A senior lawyer saying something is “unnecessary” or “overkill” ought to have registered more than it did.

This is also a circumstance where a more meaningful question for people in power involved in contemplating a step away from convention: should it — rather than could it — be done?

Bell recommended a series of measures that would codify conventions and require the publication of all appointments in multiple locations as a result of the Morrison multiple ministry saga.

The codification of these conventions, and the censure motion passed by the House of Representatives relating to the Morrison saga, should have been as unnecessary as the appointments the former prime minister snaffled for himself over a two-year period.

This creates a precedent. Are there any other conventions that should be legislated before an individual or group decide to get adventurous?

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