This week, Scott Morrison will take his seat in the House of Representatives for the last time. There has been so much criticism of his prime ministership, recently revisited on the ABC’s Nemesis, that his achievements have been obscured in the avalanche of negatives.

There is no denying the serious errors of judgment. I will never understand the secret ministries, for instance. Yet, we should never forget that every prime ministership is a balance sheet of achievements and mistakes.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

In the long perspective of history, the legacies matter most, while the ephemera fade from memory. For Morrison, as for other former PMs, those legacies ultimately will define him.

AUKUS, our most important strategic initiative since ANZUS, was both conceived and delivered by Morrison; it simply would not have happened without him. He succeeded, where other Liberal leaders had failed, in navigating the tricky politics of the coalition to commit Australia to net-zero emissions by 2050. He steered Australia through COVID, the greatest civil emergency in our history; although there were missteps along the way, on his watch Australia achieved virtually the best public health outcomes in the world.

I did not serve in Morrison’s cabinet, but I was in London at the time of two of his signature achievements: AUKUS and the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement. I witnessed his decisive role in both.

I well remember the evening Scott and I spent with Boris Johnson in July 2021. The FTA negotiations were deadlocked over agricultural access to the UK market. We went to a working dinner at 10 Downing Street to salvage the deal. Aside from notetakers, there were only four of us in the room: Scott, me, Johnson and his chief trade advisor. Morrison comprehensively out-negotiated – one might say bulldozed – an under-prepared Johnson. We walked away with a deal so much more favourable than the greatest ambitions of our professional trade negotiators that, when the following morning I briefed them, they were literally open-mouthed at the outcome.

Scott Morrison comprehensively out-negotiated – one might say bulldozed – an under-prepared Boris Johnson over the free-trade agreement.Credit: AP

In landing the FTA, Morrison reversed the half-century of Australian exclusion from Europe’s largest market after Britain abandoned us to join the EEC in the 1970s. Australia’s graziers and canegrowers should be raising a glass to him this week.

There are currently seven living former PMs. Naturally, they remain important national figures. There are no conventions governing the role – it is pretty much what each of them choose to make it.