A report into the actions of the offices of Scott Morrison and Karen Andrews on election day illustrates a grubby government succumbing to a grubby death.
It was so apt that a rotten government — one that trashed governance norms, politicised the public service, and saw governing entirely through the prism of the next media release — went to its death trying to force public servants to breach caretaker conventions and publicise an election-day press release about a boat.
The Home Affairs report into how Scott Morrison’s office and that of former Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews tried to force that department to act as an election propaganda arm of the Coalition offers an insight into just how desperate the Liberals were on election day.
The first convention they trashed was their own: it was Morrison who, as immigration minister, invented the idea of “on-water matters”, which necessitated silence about everything to do with boats of asylum seekers or illegal immigrants.
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