Prime Minister Morrison’s curious accretion of portfolios, in itself no formal breach of the Constitution, raises a fundamental issue exposed by the pandemic.
This is the whittling away of the checks and balances on the exercise of executive power which have prevailed even in colonial times.
This was that any significant exercise of executive power, for example, the making of regulations, would go to the executive council where a person other than the minister, normally the governor (including in this comment the Governor-General), would decide.
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