Gide, humans. Today on the show, we dig deep into one of the most perplexing political scandals

that I think I've ever seen in Australian politics. Perplexing because the person at the heart of the scandal has motives that, to me, appear completely inscrutable. It is a scandal that has divided people

along political lines and has captivated the attention of Australia much longer than I would

have expected it to. It involves the former Prime Minister, who's not all that former, we're

only a hundred and a few days into the new administration of his successor.

And his behavior during the pandemic, in particular, his habit, secretive habit, if you will, of accumulating other ministries to himself.

So if you're in the United States, you know, in a parliamentary democracy,

we have ministers who have particular portfolios, and those portfolios might be the

Treasury or finance or natural resources or education or something like that. They're like

Cabinet. I mean, they are Cabinet ministers, but they're, you know, in America, they're appointed

outside of Congress by the executive

themselves, by the president. In a parliamentary democracy, those people are also parliamentarians,

so they come from Congress and they also form the cabinet and they make the big decisions

about things. Well, in this case, the prime minister throughout the course of the pandemic and I guess over the course of more than 12 months, decided to secretly decree that he himself

was a co-cabinet minister, a co-secretary in the American Parliament, Secretary of the Treasury,

secretary of the environment, Secretary of the Environment,

all this sort of stuff. It's almost like a president just deciding that not only are they president, but they also want to be Secretary of State, and they also want to be Secretary of

the Interior, and they're not want to tell anyone about it. But why would you do that?

And why would you not exercise that power except for in one case?

This weird situation has been captivating Australian political insiders for the past month.

So I wanted to get the ultimate Australian political insider on the show to break it down for you and to tell me what he thinks it means for Australian democracy

and for democracy around the world. Peter also has some interesting, we're talking about Peter Van

...