Prime ministers have no special prerogatives or powers. They cannot be compared to presidents, autocrats, dictators or monarchs. They only hold office by virtue of the confidence of their colleagues, who can, and in Australia frequently do, replace them.

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This is fundamental to establishing trust in the government by the governed.

Ever since Federation, Australians have trusted the members of their parliaments, which have historically been dominated by competing parties representing sectional interests on the three-century-old British model, to be open about who's in charge and who is responsible for what.

The idea someone has been secretly influencing key government decisions has been unthinkable.

That could be one of the reasons why, having had himself sworn in, not only as the supplementary health and finance minister during the early stages of the pandemic, but also as the joint resources minister during 2021, Scott Morrison kept this secret.

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If he had thought for a moment such appointments, in two out of the three instances made without the knowledge of the existing ministers, would have passed his famous "pub test" then there would have been nothing to hide.

The long established practice has been that when such changes are made they are announced to the Parliament and the public. What sets Mr Morrison's actions apart is that nobody had stepped down or been sacked and that his additional powers were not made public.

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Those power grabs, which Barnaby Joyce has rightly described as "presidential", are all the more remarkable for being carried out without the knowledge or consent of the two incumbents, Mathias Cormann and Nationals MP Keith Pitt.

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Mr Cormann apparently would not have known his authority had been compromised until the news broke over the weekend.

What appears to have been, at the very least, an act of monumental hubris could have a very long tail.

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