It has been an open secret that the Member for Cook, Scott John Morrison - of 324 mocking nicknames fame - would not see a full parliamentary term out once he lost government on 21 May 2022. Many thought that he would be gone within a year.
His Statement of Registerable Interests 47th Parliament tells the story as it unfolds.....
Two months and 11 days after the 2022 federal election Morrison registered Triginta Pty Ltd with himself as sole director and shareholder. It is now entered in his Statement as "superannuation". An apparently self-managed super fund to complement his other two superannuation accounts with Australian Super & MLC Super & Investments.
He reactivated the Morrison Family Trust now operating "Advisory Services" with himself as both sole registered director and, a "Beneficiary" along with his spouse & dependent children.
It is probable he was intent on availing himself of every lawful tax advantage when he also listed Triginta Pty Ltd as As Trustee For (ATF) the Morrison Family Trust with himself as "Trustee".
Either while putting these financial building blocks in place or afterwards, Morrison began to 'embed' himself deeper within a number of organisations that align themselves with increasingly rigid right wing ideology, U.S. foreign policy and/or the defence industry lobby.
These are organisations that make the Australian-based Institute of Public Affairs look like so many silly children.
In his Statement of Registrable Interests document processed on 28 August 2022 Scott Morrison lists 20 organisations under line item 13. Membership of any organisation where a conflict of interest with a Member’s public duties could foreseeably arise or be seen to arise.
On 13 September 2022 Morrison added another organization to this list:
Honorary Advisory Board, International Democrat Union.
This 11-member Honorary Advisory Board is made up of former leaders of 'conservative' political party parties both in and out of government and, contains three former Liberal prime ministers, John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.
NOTE: In 2023 the International Democrat Union (IDU) which currently styles itself The Global Alliance of the Centre Right appears to be a decidedly right wing group whose principal purpose is to assist political parties with IDU membership to win elections and to retain government. The Liberal Party of Australia was one of 19 founding signatories of IDU in London on 24 August 1983.
History: Early US. Central Intelligence Agency assessment of UDI as transnational, anti-socialist & anti-Soviet at
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T01058R000303190001-0.pdf
Present leadership of the IDU comprises representatives of:
Conservative Party, Canada
Liberal Party, Australia (Brian Loughnane)
Conservative Party UK
New Patriotic Party, Ghana
Partido Unionista, Guatemala
Conservative Party, Norway
Republican Party, USA.
With the remainder of its organisational structure also including representatives of:
Kataeb Party, Lebanon
Christian Social Union, Germany
Christian Democrat Union, Germany
European People's Party
Likud, Israel
PRO, Argentina
Renovación Nacional, Chile
Democratic Party, Mongolia
PDM, Namibia
Asia Pacific Democrat Union
ECR Party.
On 29 September 2022 Morrison added another board to 13. Memberships of any organisation where a conflict of interest with a Member’s public duties could foreseeably arise or be seen to arise
Member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the China Center of the Hudson Institute.
This conservative institute peopled by former Republican politicians & former US government advisors or politically-appointed diplomats gives a simpler title to this 4-member board - “The Advisory Board”.
Then on 2 May 2023 Morrison again updated his Statement to include a position on the Board of Advisors of the Washington DC-based Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) whose 20-member board of directors includes James Murdoch. A position he describes for the record as an "honorary member". The Centre has strong ties to the American military and the U.S. defence industry.
Ahead of his retirement from the Australian Parliament he has been making additional casual income as he assembled his network of influence from:
Victory of Life Centre;
Worldwide Support for Development; and
The Hudson Institute.
Morrison has also had international air travel, accommodation and incidentals paid by:
- Owner of a South Korean daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo Co Ltd, Asian Leadership Conference 12-15 July 2022;
- World Wide Support for Development, Japan 24-30 July 2022 (this included WWSD picking up the tab for his wife and multinational Servcorp supplying him with office facilities & administrative support); and
- International Democrat Union (IDU), New York & Washington DC 4-11 December 2022.
As part of An initiative of the Worldwide Support for Development in association with the International Democratic Union and the Japan Forum for International Relations Morrison also gave an apparently ghost-written address at the Global Opinion Leaders Summit in Tokyo on 28 July 2022.
Two more months to go until the 40th anniversary of the @idualliance. We are looking forward to welcoming our global membership and freedom loving partners and friends to the birthplace of IDU, to London! Register today and join us this June! #idu40 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/5hVZ5pXMLh
— International Democrat Union (@idualliance) April 18, 2023
All this has not gone unnoticed.....
The Saturday Paper, 6 May 2023:
Editorial
It is almost too perfect. Scott Morrison will leave parliament to become a lobbyist, an oily little stain trailing him out of the office. The irony is that this will be the first time he has represented somebody other than himself. He will finally go to Canberra with a purpose.
Looked at another way, AUKUS was a $368 billion pitch to get Scott Morrison a job. It is reported that he will soon take a role at a British defence company. He will not resign until the contract is signed. It is a continuous, unbroken grift.
Morrison is not “going to the other side”. He was always a shill for corporate interests. His approach to defence was always about his fortunes, not the country’s. This year, as he called for an enormous increase in military spending, he was shopping himself to the very companies that would profit most. There is no shame. There is not even self-respect. There is just Scott.
Lobbying is a grub in the political system. It exists to distort democracy. It is grotesque that someone who was once prime minister would hang out his shingle. It is appalling how common it has become for ministers and their staffers to take up work touting for industry.
This week it was reported that nearly 1800 lobbyists have orange passes that give them full access to Parliament House. There is no register for who has these passes or of which politicians sponsored them.
The lobbying code and register are not enforceable. As The Centre for Public Integrity notes, they need to be legislated and breaches need to carry criminal penalties. Ministerial diaries should be published and meetings with lobbyists noted.
In a report released this week, the centre points to a string of recent ministers now working as lobbyists: former Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon; former Foreign minister Julie Bishop; former Trade minister Andrew Robb; former Defence minister Christopher Pyne, who days earlier had to register himself as a representative of a foreign government.
It notes that one of Anne Ruston’s staff took up as a lobbyist for Airbus nine days after leaving her office. One of Mathias Cormann’s staff began lobbying for Ampol a fortnight after their employment ended. On it goes, like a child pouring bath water from one cup into another.
Morrison the greaseball prime minister will soon be Morrison the greaseball lobbyist. It’s a smaller change than it should be, a final tarnish on the office, a sad expression of a failed politics, unable to attract real talent, bobbing back and forth through the sluiceway of venality and self-interest.
His pass will change colour, perhaps his shoes will get better, but he will remain the spiv he always has been, a travelling salesman driving a caravan of cant and opportunism and now guns and probably submarines. It is terribly sad in the way that realising the country was run for four years by a solipsistic thug is terribly sad.
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