Editor's note: Daryl Guppy is an international financial technical analysis expert. He has provided a weekly Shanghai Index analysis for media for the Chinese mainland for more than a decade. Guppy appears regularly on CNBC Asia and is known as "The Chart Man." He is a national board member of the Australia China Business Council. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

When riding an escalator in Singapore, you stand on the left so people in a hurry can climb the stairs on the right. Woe betides the tourist who stands on the right and blocks progress. There is no law to say you have to do this, but it is the convention of accepted behavior that makes rush hour run smoothly.

On a much larger scale, this underpins the issues of concern in Australian politics.

Convention, rather than law, was broken by former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he secretly appointed himself as Minister of five portfolios, including the powerful Home Affairs Ministry. At the time, Home Affairs had oversight of agencies such as Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force.

These secret appointments are described by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as "unprecedented trashing of our democracy." Amongst all the principles or conventions that underpin British-style democracy used in Australia, two are essential. First is that ministers are responsible for what happens in the departments under their control. Second, Members of Parliament will not mislead the parliament.

The recently revealed actions of Morrison fail against both these measures. His secret self-appointment to five ministries undermined both of these essential foundation principles.

The secrecy of the appointments is the first issue. The secrecy was so elevated that not all of the ghosted ministers were told of the shadow appointments. Heads of departments were not told, and in the powerful Homeland Security department, the heads of intelligence and defense agencies were not informed.

The secret appointments also arguably had the effect of misleading the parliament. It is expected that ministers will be held responsible for the decisions made by their departments. This is a convention of ministerial responsibility and it is enabled by rigorous questioning of a minister in the parliament.

The parliament was not informed of the five ghost appointments taken by Morrison so it begs the question of how a minister could be held to account for the activity of his department when there was also a ghost minister. The failure of Morrison to identify himself as a minister during every "Question Time" deceived the parliament, to which ministers are responsible, and the Australian people.

Another aspect of these secret appointments is the way the public was kept in the dark. It is expected that ministerial decisions will be clear and transparent. It remains an open question if and when Morrison exercised his secret ghost minister powers to intervene in decisions that should have been made by the relevant minister.

By his own admission, Morrison secretly took over ministerial powers of the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources because he wanted to take control of the decision-making process around the controversial Pep-11 gas exploration licence in effect, overruling the decision made by the responsible minister.  

The structure of government in Australia means the cabinet accepts responsibility for ministerial decisions. The Prime Minister's creation of secret ministerial control suggests an extraordinary lack of faith in his cabinet colleagues. There is no provision in the constitution for the Prime Minister to take primary Presidential-style control of the decisions of the cabinet, let alone to do so in secret. 

It is ironic that the position of Prime Minister is established only by convention as it is not recognized in the constitution. It's surely one convention that Morrison would be careful not to ignore.

Morrison's explanation of these actions is that extraordinary COVID-19 times called for extraordinary responses. That is true as far as it goes, although it fails to recognize there are well established conventions that allow for ongoing government business if a minister is incapacitated. This explanation also fails to explain why secrecy was necessary and until an acceptable explanation is given, a whiff of impropriety remains.

It turns out the conventions which underpin democracy are vulnerable to attack by those who refuse to respect them. It is a lesson that former U.S. President Donald Trump is still teaching America, and it's a lesson from Boris Johnston, the UK has rejected. It's unlikely Morrison will resign, but there is an increasing probability he will be censured by the parliament and that will not be done in secret.

This usurpation of power and undermining of democracy comes from a Prime Minister who made great fuss and political mileage from allegations that Australia's democracy was under threat from foreign influence. It's turned out that the real threat to Australian democracy came from within.

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