Sky News Afternoon Briefing with Kieran Gilbert

KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: Let's go to the live to Perth now, I'm joined by the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman. Thanks for your time. Scott Morrison issued a statement today saying “they were extraordinary times and required extraordinary measures to respond during the pandemic,” he says “to achieve this we needed to ensure continuity of government and robust administrative arrangements to deal with the unexpected.” What do you say to his critique, his explanation, for why he took on those extra portfolios?

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Well, one of the things I noticed in that statement was that he apologised to his colleagues, but he didn't apologise to the Australian people, which just shows that he doesn't understand just what a terrible thing this was trashing our democratic institutions, trashing our Westminster traditions. We shouldn't have had to wait for a book to come out to tell us what was happening in the government that the Australian people elect. The Prime Minister when he was in that job, in the middle of that pandemic, should have been upfront with us and that statement really left more questions than answers in my view.

GILBERT: I'll ask you the same question or similar to what I asked the Prime Minister at a news conference earlier. What's the flaw here in the system that's allowed this to eventuate? How can it be fixed?

GORMAN: Well it’s a culture of secrecy. That's the problem with the former government, is that they were obsessed with secrecy and they were obsessed with not being upfront with the Australian people. So unfortunately, some of these things do come down to culture, but some of them also come down to whether you respect our base traditions, our tradition of democracy, of parliamentary accountability. And if you've got a government that's determined at every turn to avoid that, then I don't know, but we just shouldn't be putting those sort of people in charge.

GILBERT: Can you also make it explicit that any change in Ministerial responsibility is put to the Parliament, as most often is the case.

GORMAN: With the exception of sort, because someone goes on a holiday acting arrangements, that is exactly what happens. And we've seen that at Question Time, you sit in the gallery at Question Time, you see the Prime Minister of the day come in and explain the Ministerial arrangements. So I'm not going to make any excuses for former Prime Minister Morrison, nor am I going to make any excuses for Peter Dutton and others who sat around that Cabinet table and allowed this to happen. In my view, this is actually a leadership crisis for Peter Dutton. It was a leadership crisis for him as a senior member of the Morrison Cabinet and it's a leadership crisis for him today, in that he actually hasn't shown the sort of leadership you expect of an Opposition Leader pulling his backbencher into line and also saying what he's going to do to change the secrecy culture within the Liberal Party.

GILBERT: Patrick Gorman, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister. Appreciate your time. Thanks.

GORMAN: Thank you, Kieran.