Yesterday saw the release of the solicitor general’s report into the legality of former prime minister Scott Morrison’s multiple secret portfolios. The report found the appointments to the five ministries were legal, but that their secretive nature breached “the principle of responsible government”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the government would set up an inquiry to examine how and why it occurred, and how it can be prevented from happening again. Michelle Grattan writes that while there are still many questions to be answered over the scandal, the inquiry is political too: a little bit of tit-for-tat, and a little bit of ensuring Morrison continues to inflict damage on an opposition already in a parlous state.

Meanwhile, we had journalism scholar Matthew Ricketson read the book that launched this whole scandal, Plagued, by Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers. Ricketson says the book appears to be an attempt to secure the former PM’s legacy as the leader who steered Australia through the global pandemic. Instead, the book’s revelations about the secret ministries has irrevocably tarnished it. The book will go down in history, Ricketson says, as ‘an eye-watering own goal’.

But it’s not just the revelations that are problematic. Or even that Benson and Chambers sat on them for two years. Ricketson delivers a scathing analysis of Plagued as an example of the kind of book-length political journalism that privileges the quotidian detail offered by access – what people drink, what they wear, their text messages – over analysis, or doing a journalist’s job of holding the powerful to account. And he argues that in not disclosing their ‘inside’ sources, Benson and Chambers demand an unreasonable, unearned degree of trust.

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