Scott Morrison’s Office Personally Told The ABF To Publicise Election Day Boat Interception
A final craven act from Morrison.
In a final shitty move in his time as Prime Minister, Scott Morrison instructed the Australian Border Force to publicise the offshore interception of an asylum seeker boat on election day.
Last Saturday, many voters received a text announcing that the ABF had stopped a boat off the Australian coast — urging them to vote Liberal to keep Australia’s borders safe. In addition to this, the ABF released a statement on the boat and Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews gave a press conference — all of which broke the usual protocol of not discussing “on water matters”.
The move was largely criticised as a last-ditch effort to win Liberal votes on election day, and the ABC has now revealed that Scott Morrison’s own office instructed the ABF to publicise the incident in a direct request. According to the ABC, the Department of Home Affairs checked the legality of releasing a statement on election day out of fears that it could be in breach of the caretaker conventions — which basically prevent the politicisation of public service matters during an election campaign.
“The conventions support practices that are intended to preserve the apolitical nature of the Australian Public Service (APS) and avoid the use of Australian Government resources in a manner that may advantage a particular political party,” the document reads.
Ultimately, the Home Affairs department saw no issue with a statement being issued and the PMO reportedly instructed the ABF to do so. The decisions made on Saturday will now be the subject of an inquiry by Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo.
Anthony Albanese was quick to slam his former opponent’s decision in an interview with ABC’s RN Breakfast on Friday. “There was nothing normal about the protocols that were not observed here,” said Albanese. “We had a circumstance whereby the Prime Minister’s office contacted my office in the middle of Saturday, and we indicated it would be entirely inappropriate for this event to be politicised. It’s a clear breach of the caretaker conventions.
“This is a government and a former prime minister who used to stand up and say that he would not comment on on-water matters.
“Very clearly this statement was made so that it could facilitate the sending of – we are not sure how many – but potentially many millions of text messages to voters in a last-minute scare campaign.
“It was an entire abuse of proper processes and a disgraceful act from a government which was prepared to politicise everything but solve nothing.”
When it comes to refugee and asylum seeker policy, the Australian Labor Party supports the same Operation Sovereign Borders policy that the Morrison Government held, so although we will see a review into why this “on water” matter was so heavily publicised, it remains unlikely that we will see any real chance to Australia’s abhorrent refugee policy.
Scott Morrison was approached by the ABC on the situation but declined to comment.
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