Josh Frydenberg has appointed a longtime Liberal party staffer to a senior position at the competition regulator that pays a salary of more than half a million dollars a year.
The treasurer on Friday announced he had appointed Peter Crone to a five-year term as a commissioner at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alongside the economist Anna Brakey.
ACCC commissioners are second only to the chair, currently Rod Sims, at the powerful regulator, which is in charge of everything from prosecuting price-fixing cartels to pursuing companies that sell unsafe products.
Crone served as senior economic adviser to John Howard for eight years – most of the life of the Howard government – before leaving in 2006 to become a partner at Access Economics.
He returned to government work after the Coalition won power in 2013, taking a position as executive officer and secretariat of a commission of audit set up by the new prime minister, Tony Abbott.
Between September 2018 and September 2019 he was also a senior adviser to Frydenberg.
Labor targeted Crone in October over his appointment in January to a six-figure job at the National Bushfire Recovery Agency, which the government gave him without consulting with the agency’s boss, Andrew Colvin.
Crone had been set for a payday of up to $242,390 but his contract was cancelled mid-year and he instead received $136,000 for six months of work.
During question time on 21 October, the deputy opposition leader, Richard Marles, asked the prime minister, “when Australia was suffering its worst bushfires, why did the prime minister’s office give a job to the bloke they all call ‘Crony’?”.
Morrison defended Crone, saying that he was “an eminently qualified economist”.
“His political views are a matter for him, just as they are for any other economist that the government may employ,” Morrison said.
Later that week, the opposition frontbencher Andrew Leigh also used parliamentary privilege to attack the appointment of Crone as an example of the government “funnelling public dollars to their mates”.
“His nickname is ‘Cronie’,” Leigh said.
Announcing the appointments of Crone and Brakey as ACCC commissioners on Friday, Frydenberg said they “will further strengthen the ACCC’s capacity to promote competition and fair trade in markets for the benefit of consumers, small businesses and the community”.
He said Crone “has 30 years of experience advising on economics, public policy and regulation at the highest levels of government and business in Australia”.
This included stints as an economist at Ernst and Young, the Coles Group and the Business Council of Australia, Frydenberg said.
Frydenberg told Guardian Australia the states were consulted on Crone and Brakey’s appointments, as required by an agreement struck in 1994.
“Following this consultation, the appointments were endorsed through the formal process including by the governments of South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia as well as by the chief minister of the Northern Territory,” he said.
However, he did not answer other questions put by Guardian Australia about Crone’s appointment and his history of service to the Liberal party.
ACCC commissioners are paid $554,220 a year, according to the Remuneration Tribunal.
