Christian Porter and Scott Morrison.Credit:Fairfax Media
To keep Porter was untenable because it would have redefined the standards for ministers in a way that would have opened the door to a Pandora’s box of secret deals and,over time,outright corruption.
Loading
Rather than reveal their financial interests,and therefore any conflicts of interest,ministers could then deploy the same sort of blind trust that helped Porter pay his legal bills in his defamation action against the ABC.
What Porter wanted to do looked simple but would have set a dangerous precedent. He allowed the trust to fund some of his litigation,and he asked the trust to assure him none of the donors were lobbyists or foreign entities banned from making political donations.
This meant he had a pecuniary interest,which he disclosed to Parliament on September 14,but it was vague from the start. Voters had to take Porter at his word that he did not know who had helped him.
What if that became the new standard? What if a minister hid the names of his or her donors and favoured them in decisions worth millions of dollars? This is not a question about Porter’s conduct but about the rules he wanted the Prime Minister to accept.