Government defends flurry of appointments to key roles of former Coalition staffers and MPs

The Morrison government has appointed more than 30 former Coalition ministers, MPs, staffers and donors to taxpayer-funded jobs in the last six months alone.

Last week, the attorney general, Michaelia Cash, appointed six people with Liberal links to the AAT, which conducts merits reviews of government decisions.

These included former NSW minister Pru Goward, a former chief of staff to Morrison and two former Western Australian state politicians who lost their seats at the 2021 election.

Don Morris, a former Tasmanian legislative council member, and Donna Petrovich, a former Liberal MP, were reappointed to the tribunal at the same time.

Cash has defended the appointments, saying that 15 of the 19 new appointments this round were of legally qualified people.

Former NSW minister Don Harwin was appointed to the Australia Council board.

In April, the former federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson was appointed as a member of the council of the Australian War Memorial.

The Morrison government appointed Timothy Longstaff, a former senior adviser to then trade minister Simon Birmingham and former finance minister Mathias Cormann, as a non-executive director of Snowy Hydro Limited and reappointed Scott Mitchell, a former WA Liberal government staffer, as a non executive director. Both are three-year appointments.

The health minister, Greg Hunt, appointed his mental health and suicide prevention adviser, Michael Gardner, as the head of the National Suicide Prevention Office.

Penny Fowler, a donor to the Liberal party in 2004, was appointed as chair of the National Portrait Gallery board.

Appointments made in March include:

In January, former Liberal senator Helen Kroger was reappointed to a five-year term from July as the Australian Fisheries Management Authority Commission chairperson.

In December:

Warwick Smith, a minister in the Howard government, was appointed for a three-year term as the chair of the council of the National Museum of Australia.