Scott Morrison Refuses To Resign From Parliament Amid Ministerial Portfolio Fiasco

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been grilled in a fiery press conference over his decision to secretly appoint himself to five ministerial portfolios during the pandemic.

"These were extraordinary times in which I had the great honour and privilege to serve as Prime Minister," he said on Wednesday.

"No Prime Minister has faced the same combination of circumstances, be it the pandemic or indeed the drought, the global recession and the Australian recession caused by the pandemic and the many other natural disasters that befell the country over that period of time."

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Defending his actions, Morrison said it was the right thing to do.

"I believed it was a prudent and responsible action in the middle of a crisis to have those emergency powers in place to ensure that I could exercise the expectations of my responsibilities.

He said there was a “clear expectation” from the media, the public and elsewhere “that I as prime minister was responsible pretty much for every single thing that was going on,” he said.

“So in that context, with an understanding of the expectation of public responsibility singularly directed at the prime minister, I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations that would be unforeseen, that would enable me to act in the national interests.

“And that is what I did in a crisis,” he said.

Morrison said health and finance portfolios were given to him because powers needed to be shared as those ministers were being given new and extraordinary powers to deal with the pandemic.

While the addition of Treasury and Home Affairs was because “they were portfolio areas where ministers could exercise unilateral decisions without reference to cabinet,” Morrison deflected.

“We were in a rather extreme situation over a protracted period of time. Those safeguards were put in place for precautionary, for prudent, responsible reasons,” he said.

Despite purporting he is happy to have a conversation about whether he “overstepped the mark", the member for Cook, continues to resist calls to resign from parliament.

"Let me explain what I said. I did not take over the treasury portfolio. I did not take over the home affairs portfolio. I did not take over the health portfolio," Morrison said.

"I was administratively sworn in, which gave me authority, like many other ministers had, to exercise decisions in an emergency situation. It was something that was done on an order of many other issues we were dealing with at the time.

Morrison wrapped up the press conference by asking the media not to photograph his family as he embarks on "being a quiet Australian in the shire”.

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