March 2, 2024
When Scott Morrison bid farewell to federal parliament this week, he presented Australia with a new problem. And it was not of his making.
Morrison became the first former prime minister without independent wealth to launch into post-parliamentary life without a generous lifetime pension. That’s why it took him nearly two years to depart after losing power. The 55-year-old has been scrambling to put together enough income to support a family and a mortgage.
When he lost the prime ministership, he lost 60 per cent of his income, The Lodge, Kirribilli House, his domestic staff and his air force jet.
Unable to find a well-paid, full-time job outside politics, he stayed in parliament while he cobbled together several part-time positions on advisory boards and think tanks. Notably, all the ones we know about are with foreign outfits. And he’s going on the evangelical speaking circuit in the US to hawk his forthcoming book, Plans for Your Good. In other words, it seems he’s too radioactive politically to find paid work in his own country.
The spectacle of an ex-PM phoning around asking for work was described privately by a senior Liberal as “undignified”. Another Liberal said that, worse still, getting knocked back by everyone except foreigners and religious publishers was “pathetic”.
Other ex-PMs have struggled to find serious, paid, post-politics jobs too. Tony Abbott, for instance. But while he struggled, he wasn’t struggling, thanks to his lifetime parliamentary pension of some $300,000 a year.
So what about that famously generous pension scheme for ex-PMs? It’s dead. As opposition leader, Labor’s Mark Latham wrote its death warrant when he proposed slashing politicians’ perks, and PM John Howard carried out the execution in an effort to match Latham’s surging popularity. Hard to believe now, but yes, Latham was popular once.
So only those elected to federal parliament before 2004 were entitled to the gilded scheme of old. The first prime minister to leave office without it was Malcolm Turnbull, but you’ll be relieved to know that he hasn’t had to mortgage his harbourside mansion to pay the electricity bill.
Morrison is the first for whom it’s actually been a problem. So what, you might ask? It’s his problem. Yes, it is, but it’s also our problem. Why?
“It’s not in our national interest to have former prime ministers desperate to earn a dollar,” says James Paterson, a Liberal senator for Victoria and Coalition spokesperson on home affairs and cybersecurity. “We should never want someone who has chaired the national security committee of cabinet” – a core prime ministerial responsibility – “struggling to pay a mortgage,” Paterson says, although he hastens to add that he’s not concerned about the ethics of any particular individual.
Because, in a state of desperation, what might they sell? They know a great many security secrets: Australia’s but also those of other nations.
One of the potential dangers was exposed dramatically this week by the chief of ASIO, Mike Burgess. He set off a frenzy of speculation by describing a former Australian politician, unnamed, who was doing the bidding of a foreign power, also unnamed.
This politician “sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime”, said Burgess in his annual threat assessment speech. The foreign regime was operating a spy group, “aggressive and experienced”, specifically dedicated to penetrating Australia. He named it the “A-team”, A for Australia.
“At one point, the former politician even proposed bringing a prime minister’s family member into the spies’ orbit. Fortunately, that plot did not go ahead, but other schemes did.”
Burgess implied that it happened before the Turnbull government’s foreign interference and espionage laws took effect in 2018. If so, this would likely mean that it was not illegal at the time.
Amid the feverish phone calls that crisscrossed the country in search of the guilty party, multiple suspects ruled themselves out. These included former Labor senator Sam Dastyari and former Labor NSW MP Ernest Wong.
But only one person came forward to identify themselves as part of such an approach – Malcolm Turnbull’s son, Alex. He told news.com.au that he didn’t know whether Burgess was referring to his case, but that his experience fitted the description – around 2017 he was offered equity in a company in a “brazen” approach by a foreign power to establish influence over him. He said he reported the approach to the authorities at the time.
Was this the case Burgess was talking about? An informed source tells me that it was not. So it wasn’t a unique episode? My source said: “I would be astonished if there were any prime ministers whose families have not been approached by Chinese agents of influence.”
Joe Hockey raged that Burgess, by not naming the traitorous politician, had smeared all former Australian politicians. So why do it? Burgess gave two reasons. One, he wanted to raise awareness of the risks. He certainly achieved that. And two, he wanted to let the rival intelligence service know that they’d been outed. ASIO had disrupted the “A-team” last year, he said.
He didn’t want to name the guilty politician, he said, because “we are a rule-of-law country” and he or she was “not doing it now” and therefore not breaking the law.
Overlooked in the clamour was a threshold moment in a Melbourne courtroom on Thursday. A man was jailed for an act of foreign interference in Australian politics. It was the first time under the 2018 foreign interference laws.
The former president of the Oceania Federation of Chinese Organisations, Di Sanh Duong, 68, had given then federal Liberal minister, Alan Tudge, a $37,000 cheque to present to Melbourne Children’s Hospital. In sentencing him to jail for two years and nine months, Judge Richard Maidment told Duong that he’d given the cheque to the unwitting Tudge “because you believed that he could potentially be persuaded to influence Australian government policy in a manner favourable to the Chinese Communist Party”.
The larger point is that there is a great game afoot, a contest for global dominance between two superpowers, and Australia is a prime playing field. And, on that field, a former prime minister is a special prize.
Not that we should shed tears for Scott Morrison. He had the option of staying in parliament on his backbencher’s salary of $225,000, an income that put him in the highest-paid 2 per cent of the workforce. Like all MPs elected after 2004, he may not get the handsome lifetime parliamentary pension but he has been enjoying the parliamentary superannuation scheme with an employer contribution of 15 per cent, more generous than the national standard of 11. Former prime ministers also are entitled to a car and driver and an office with staff, so they remain presentable.
But we should be concerned for our country. A prime minister worried about his post-political income could be tempted to ingratiate him- or herself with a company, a tycoon, an industry or a rival nation. We have a National Anti-Corruption Commission now, but that’s no guarantee.
Simon Longstaff of the Ethics Centre has a proposal for a structural solution. We should offer former prime ministers the option of appointment as special envoys for a cause that serves the national interest and matches their own skills and interests. Or we should offer them positions as mentors to younger generations of legislators and policymakers. The positions should be paid.
Why? First, because a former PM represents a huge investment of public time and resources and offers capabilities and contacts that should be put to work in the national interest. Second, because “if there’s a realistic possibility of continuing to serve, and you don’t have to go hunting for board jobs in a defence company or whatever, you have better options in line with what you’ve already done”, says Longstaff.
“If you can get your retired senior politicians to play a positive role in the world once they’re unshackled from partisan politics, it strikes me as a very good thing.”
We have time to work on this. Both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton were elected before 2004, so they’ll collect the handsome lifetime pensions due under the old, gold scheme. But beyond them lies a looming liability that we could turn into an asset.
Turnbull once complained of former prime ministers hanging around like “angry ghosts”. Worse will be hungry, angry ghosts – hangry ones. Let’s put them to good use instead.
