One in five of those appointed to government bodies in the past two weeks have links to the Liberal or National parties, analysis reveals.
The Coalition made the usual flurry of appointments in the last weeks before the election was called on Thursday morning.
In the two weeks since 27 March, it has publicly announced 70 appointments to boards, statutory bodies and tribunals, and diplomatic postings, according to a Guardian analysis.
Of those, 14 individuals, or 20%, were former Liberal or National MPs, party executives, or senior advisers to Coalition ministers. Eight were previously federal or state politicians, five were senior advisers and one was a high-ranking party executive.
The appointments include the former Liberal MP Ewen Jones, appointed to the board of the National Film and Sound Archive, the former Nationals state MP Hugh Delahunty, who was appointed to the Sport Australia board, and the former Nationals federal director Scott Mitchell, who was named as a non-executive director of Snowy Hydro.
The former Liberal ACT chief minister Kate Carnell was appointed to the Defence Industry Advisory Board, while former Liberal senator, Richard Alston, was appointed to the Council of the National Gallery.
Two former Liberal MPs – Phillip Barresi and ACT MLA Tony De Domenico – were appointed to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation.
The government was forced to defend its appointments in the dying days of parliament this week. The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, told Senate estimates that between 120 to 150 appointments had been made between 14 March and 5 April.
Cormann rejected any suggestion of recruiting “mates” and said the government was simply getting its house in order before the caretaker period, which began on Thursday.
“We can’t win,” he said. “When we do it early, we get criticised. When we do it at the time they are due when the vacancies are there, we get criticised.”
Labor has already warned that it reserves the right to cancel last-minute appointments, and the shadow finance minister, Jim Chalmers, said on Thursday the public would rightly question the decisions.
“The point that we’ve made is that in many cases these appointments aren’t due until after the election,” Chalmers told the ABC. “When it comes to quite senior appointments, like the Future Fund and others, we think it would have been appropriate for the government to consult with the opposition, given these appointments are long-term appointments.”
It is common for both sides of politics to make a large number of appointments to government bodies before an election. In the past, tribunals such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal have been stacked with former MPs. The February round of AAT appointments included former Senate president Stephen Parry, former federal Liberal MP Robert Baldwin, former Nationals minister De-Anne Kelly, and former state Liberals MPs Michael Sutherland, Joe Francis and Steven Griffiths.
But, in this latest round of appointments, the seven new AAT members announced by the attorney general, Christian Porter, had no clear or obvious links to the Liberal or National parties.
None of the diplomatic postings had such links either, instead going to highly experienced career diplomats.
Earlier this week, Labor’s Penny Wong used Senate estimates to accuse the government of making about seven appointments a day during the past few weeks.
