Scott Morrison has copied Donald Trump’s corruption strategy by claiming he has the power to declare documents and meetings classified by “waving a magic wand and just saying it’s so”. While on the flip side Donald Trump, who is currently under investigation by the FBI for stealing classified documents, claims he declassified the documents in his head which is almost identical to Scott Morrison’s magic wand trick.

What is also very disturbing is that in October 2020 Scott Morrison appointed his advisor and co-conspirator Andrew Shearer as head of Australia’s intelligence services, Office of National Intelligence (ONI), which would be handy if Morrison wanted to hide his corruption. But more on that in a minute.

Below is the outline of a massive new scandal that is just starting to explode and it’s not going away.

The background:

In 2020 it was exposed that Prime Minister Scott Morrison set up the Cabinet Office Policy Committee which was nothing more than a sham committee so Morrison could have meetings and hide the content of the meetings for 20 years by claiming they were protected by Cabinet confidentiality. This is consistent with Scott Morrison and Governor-General David Hurley conspiring to secretly appoint Scott Morrison to numerous cabinet positions, as a secret second Minister, while Morrison was Prime Minister. (Click here to read more)

The below exchange took place in the federal parliament on the 2nd of March 2020:

Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:01): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Prime Minister. Today the Minister representing the Prime Minister told the Senate that the Cabinet Office Policy Committee is made up of just one permanent member: the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister advise, in relation to this one-man cabinet committee, do the committee’s discussions take long? Is there a lot of disagreement in this committee, and are the meetings of this committee held in the Prime Minister’s head? Isn’t this just an abuse of the cabinet designed to hide government documents?

Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (14:02): I can confirm that the government’s committee of cabinet regularly has attending its meetings myself, the Attorney-General, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Treasurer.

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition, seeking to table a document?

Mr Albanese: Yes, I seek leave to table the document from directory.gov.au on the Cabinet Office Policy Committee.

Leave not granted. (Click here to see on the Federal Parliament website)

Scott Morrison and Donald Trump use the same strategy

The below video has Donald Trump claiming he can declassify documents just by thinking it and former US prosecutor Glenn Kirschner giving his viewpoint on the matter.

The Guardian reported (21/9/22):

Scott Morrison’s secretive cabinet committee of one permanent member appears to have met hundreds of times in the last term of parliament, documents released under freedom of information have revealed.

The cabinet office policy committee (COPC) – of which Morrison was listed as the only permanent member – created 739 sets of minutes from meetings, the information released by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) showed.

It has sparked fresh warnings from the former senator Rex Patrick that the body was an “abuse of process”, and prompted calls to release its documents, or to expand the inquiry into Morrison’s multiple ministries, as proposed by the Greens.

and:

Despite Albanese’s criticism that the COPC was the start of a “slippery slope” towards secrecy that ended with Morrison’s appointment to multiple ministries, the inquiry by former high court justice Virginia Bell is focused only on the ministries.

Shoebridge said the Bell inquiry “should be expanded to cover all potentially inappropriate uses of ministerial and cabinet discretions”.

“Ultimately whether a meeting was a cabinet meeting or not is a matter of law and substance and is not decided by the prime minister waving a magic wand and just saying it’s so,” he said. “At least that is how it’s meant to work.” (Click here to read more)

The New Daily reported (21/9/22):

Now the role of the controversial head of Australia’s intelligence services, and former Liberal adviser, Andrew Shearer, is coming under scrutiny.

Records released this week show Mr Morrison was near-constantly holding meetings via a secretive cabinet committee of which he was both chair and sole member.

Mr Shearer was said to have been present at most of the Cabinet Office Policy Committee’s first year of meetings while working as the former PM’s adviser on cabinet matters and before his 2020 promotion to the intelligence agency,

The Office of National Intelligence (ONI) boss did not respond to written questions from The New Daily on Wednesday asking if he had also advised the former PM on his other major contravention of cabinet: the secret takeover of his ministers’ responsibilities.

The committee, whose agenda was set by the PM and Mr Shearer, was revealed to have been one of the most active bodies in the government and met 739 times during the previous Parliament, despite Mr Morrison being its only member.

The arrangement was deeply unconventional and allowed Mr Morrison to declare unrelated conversations officially secret under laws relating to cabinet confidentiality.

Minutes of the committee’s meetings between 2019 and 2022 released in response to a freedom-of-information from The Guardian showed that some 665 sets of minutes remained unaccounted for. (Click here to read more)

Andrew Shearer might want to update his LinkedIn page, as per below, as it has him currently working in Washington which some would argue is true anyhow.

In October 2020 the AFR reported:

Labor is demanding Prime Minister Scott Morrison backtrack on appointing Andrew Shearer to head the nation’s premier intelligence agency, labelling him a “partisan operative” and questioning his role in mooted troop deployments while working for Tony Abbott. (Click here to read more)

One thing is for certain is that Andrew Shearer has to be sacked as Director-General of National Intelligence at the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) because of his likely role in the sham Cabinet Office Policy Committee and he almost certainly had some role in the 5 dual cabinet minister roles Morrison appointed himself to. 

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