King’s Birthday Honours: Former prime minister Scott Morrison receives Australia’s top honour

Scott Morrison has likened targets for boosting defence spending to those for reducing emissions, saying governments need both a detailed plan and to know what they are aiming for, amid pressure on Australia to increase funding.

The former prime minister also says it’s clear the AUKUS pact he helped establish is bedded down despite Chinese hopes it would fail.

And he doesn’t understand why people continually fear Donald Trump will back out when the US President has shown no signs of doing so.

He nominates the AUKUS deal and the GST guarantee for Western Australia as the elements of his legacy of which he is most proud.

The former prime minister has been appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the King’s Birthday list for his contributions to steering the response to the pandemic, economic initiatives and national security.

He paid tribute to State premiers, former colleagues and foreign leaders as he expressed his gratitude for receiving Australia’s top honour.

“It’s a very significant recognition and one that I’m very thankful to the Australian people for, because without their support, I would have never had the opportunity to serve as prime minister and and without their resilience and strength, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we did during that time,” he told The West in an interview to mark his AC.

Mr Morrison, who is carving out a post-politics career in advising on strategic and AUKUS-related matters, said ahead of the 2022 election that he didn’t think about legacy.

He says now that the ongoing survival of AUKUS proves the point he was trying to make, that “legacy defines itself” if you focus efforts on getting things done.

The trilateral defence agreement was announced in September 2021, although the final details of how Australia would acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK were not landed until early 2023, under Anthony Albanese.

“No doubt, AUKUS is standing the test and has gone through now changes of governments in three jurisdictions, something I’m certain that Xi Jinping was hoping would cause the partnership to fail,” Mr Morrison said.

“But it continues its strength.

“And I think that demonstrates the solid work that was done putting it together and ensuring it had deep support, not just at a political level but deep within the defence institutions within each country.”

He said the Trump administration “has done nothing other than confirm it”, contrary to the narrative a mercurial president could pull out of the deal.

Mr Morrison believed the strategic outlook underpinning the need for better Defence technology sharing between Australia, the US and the UK had only been confirmed by developments since.

The more challenging geostrategic outlook is also underpinning calls from the strategic policy community and the US for Australia to boost its defence spending beyond the 2.3 per cent of GDP currently planned.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Defence Minister Richard Marles Australia should be aiming for 3.5 per cent, in line with US spending and following a UK pledge to boost its budget to 3 per cent.

Mr Morrison said it was “essential” Australia boosted spending, nominating a 3 per cent level.

“Targets are important. I mean, targets were important when it came to what we were doing in the environment sphere,” he said.

“You can’t pick and choose where you want targets. And of course, they need to be populated and there needs to be a pathway there.”

Mr Morrison said he remains “very pleased” with the work he did as treasurer and then prime minister to secure WA’s fair share of the GST.

But he said the continuation of the “no worse off” top-up payments to other States — which the current government extended until 2030 in a deal to get premiers on board with NDIS changes — went against the original intention.

“The way it ultimately has been carried on is not as we designed it. It was meant to transition, not run two parallel schemes,” he said.

The cost of the top-up payments, running to tens of billions of dollars, has led to east coast economists and Premiers to call for the whole deal to be scrapped.

Mr Morrison stopped short of saying the top-up payments should be wound up.

“That’s not for me to say. I’m no longer in government,” he said.

“All I know is Western Australia does not deserve to be hit with that sort of inequity.

“And the other one of the key reasons I think that, is I think (the old GST arrangement) provides an incentive to turn off your resources industry.”