The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) recently ruled that national cabinet was not a sub-committee of the federal government.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison had used the argument to defeat the efforts of independent senator Rex Patrick to gain access to national cabinet deliberations. The federal government has now tabled legislation aimed at thwarting the AAT’s ruling, prompting Patrick to call Morrison a “sore loser”:
The first-of-its-kind case in the AAT was brought by the Senate crossbencher Rex Patrick, who argued the prime minister had no valid grounds to extend cabinet confidentiality to his regular national cabinet meetings with premiers and chief ministers.
