Australia’s Scandal-Ridden Covid Prime Minister Scott Morrison Awarded Nation’s Top Honour

In an elaborate homage to failing up, Covid-era Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been awarded Australia’s highest honour for “eminent service” to the country, despite a laundry list of scandals and scant achievements to show for it.

As leader of the centre-Right Coalition, Morrison, better known in Australia as ‘Scomo,’ was PM for just over three and a half years – between 2018 and 2022 – during which he oversaw Australia’s bonkers Covid response before losing the 2022 federal election to centre-Left Labour in a thumping defeat.

Scomo is one of 14 Australians, along with film couple Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, to receive the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) this year, with 830 Aussies being recognised on the King’s Birthday honours list on Monday.

Last year, the top honour went the the two worst Covid strongman premiers, Victoria’s Dan Andrews and Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, who between them took the cake for human rights abuses, corruption scandals, spending blow-outs and bullying.

This year, Scomo has been recognised for a revisionist version of his tenure as PM, which, beneath the glow-up, was marred by secrecy and serial scandals.

The award recognises Scomo’s “notable contributions to global engagement, to leadership of the national COVID-19 response, to economic initiatives, and to national security enhancements, especially through leadership of Australia’s contribution to AUKUS”.

What Scomo is really notable for is failing up. That, and spin.

With a background in marketing and tourism, Scomo’s knack for PR-speak, coupled with a seeming lack of genuine convictions, soon had him branded ‘Scotty from marketing’ in national media. We see this instinct at work in his framing of his award in statements made the press overnight.

“From natural disasters to a global pandemic, once in a hundred years, and of course the threats we faced in our region, and a recession caused by that global pandemic,” Scomo said.

“Through all of this Australians were just incredible and the one assumption I made is that that’s how they would be — their character would pull them through and that’s the basis on which we built the policies that helped us to achieve that.”

On balance, Australians can’t stand the guy, so leading with flattery is a smart move.

However, one can’t read about natural disasters and Scomo in the same sentence without recalling his disappearance on a family holiday to Hawaii during the first great natural disaster of his Prime Ministership, the 2019 bushfires.

After his office initially lied about his whereabouts, pictures of Scomo in a Hawaiian shirt started doing the rounds online while the country burned. When he finally faced the press, Scomo characteristically passed the buck, telling Sydney’s 2GB radio, “Look, I don’t hold a hose mate.”

Similarly, one can’t read about Australia facing a recession without recalling the Morrison government’s decision to close the country’s borders and pay working age Australians AU $90 billion (4.5% of GDP) to stay home and watch Netflix.

In signature fashion, Scomo shifted the blame for his government’s extreme Covid policies – which other governments did not implement – onto a pathogen, which last I checked, had no power to dictate policy.

In other cases, he shifted blame onto state and territory premiers, such as when he promised vaccination would not be compulsory, only to go full Shaggy – “it wasn’t me” – when premiers enforced the toughest vaccine mandates in the world, supported by the federal government’s vaccination requirements for entry into the country.

Sticking with Covid, Scomo’s biggest scandal of all was surreptitiously appointing himself to five different ministries to afford himself additional pandemic policy decision-making powers, a move which High Court justice Virginia Bell called “corrosive” to trust in government.

Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, Scomo succeeded in keeping the minutes of national cabinet meetings on Covid policy under lock and key. To this day, no one has been able to compel release of the these documents, and current PM Anthony Albanese has inexplicably refused to make them available to the public either.

Scomo was also sharply criticised for encouraging young Australians to consider getting the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine at a time when Australia’s vaccine advisory body, ATAGI, did not recommend it for under-40s, and months after other countries had already paused its use in younger cohorts due to risks of blood clotting.

The following month, in August 2021, 34 year-old Sydney woman Katie Lees died from thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Covid aside, there were the car park rorts and the sports rorts affairs, in which the Morrison government awarded federal grants totalling hundreds of millions of dollars in seats that were consequential to the Coalition, leading to accusations of pork barrelling.

And there was the Robodebt scandal, in which over $1.7 billion was unlawfully clawed from some half a million welfare recipients from 2015-2019 based on inaccurate debt calculations, resulting in extreme financial hardship, emotional distress and some suicides.

As social services minister in 2014 and 2015, Morrison played a key role in the introduction and oversight of the scheme. A Royal Commission into Robodebt found that, during his tenure, Scomo had misled the cabinet and failed to ensure the legality of the scheme, allegations which he forcefully denied.

Among his own ranks, Scomo was known as “a hypocrite and a liar” (then Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce), and “a bully” who used his claimed Christian faith as a “marketing advantage” (then Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells).

Potentially the least ugly item on Scomo’s laundry list of scandals is his brokering the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal with the UK and the US, which has drawn a mixed response. Naturally, this deal too was shrouded in secrecy and scandal.

The deal required walking away from Australia’s contract with French shipbuilder Naval Group at a cost of $835 million – for nothing.

Aside from the $368 billion price tag, the agreement, under which Australia will end up with eight submarines by the early 2040s, includes a commitment to host what is effectively a base for British and American nuclear submarines in Western Australia.

Whether you view AUKUS as a good or bad mark on Scomo’s record depends on your opinions on whether nuclear powered subs are optimal, whether you think entrenching Australia’s security alliance with the US works in our favour, and whether you consider the multi-decade timeline acceptable.

However, few would argue in support of Scomo waltzing straight into a senior executive role with a venture capital fund that invests in AUKUS technologies – Australian founded, US-based DYNE Maritime – a month before formalising his exit from politics.

After losing the federal election in 2022, Scomo was moved to the back bench in the opposition, eventually retiring from politics in February 2024. From there, he exploited his government experience and defence contacts in another private sector role for defence and security consulting firm American Global Strategies. Scomo also took on the role of chairman at Space Centre Australia later that year.

In May 2024, Scomo published an autobiography, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, the hard copy of which comes with a free vomit bag (kidding, but it should).

Scott Morrison joins the honour roll of former Australian PMs awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia, including Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott – not to mention the many citizen Australians who earned the award for doing truly great things.

For the second year in a row, the Council of the Order of Australia has rather worn the shine off this once-meaningful award by sticking it on whichever politician managed to show up for work during a pandemic, as though this alone is deserving of a medal. In which case, we all deserve a medal.

This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnett’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.