Sydney, Australia, Jan 23 (EFE).- Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday announced his retirement from politics after 16 years as a member of parliament for the Liberal Party, four of them as the head of the government until his defeat in the 2022 elections.

“After more than 16 years as the Member for Cook, I have decided to leave parliament at the end of February to take on new challenges in the global corporate sector and spend more time with my family,” Morrison said in a post on Facebook.

The former prime minister also thanked his family and supporters and said that he was announcing his resignation more than a month in advance to give his party enough time to find a replacement.

Morrison, who was prime minister between 2018 and 2022, was ousted by Labor’s Anthony Albanese in the May 2022 elections.

His term was marked by the strict travel restrictions that his cabinet imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as deeper strategic ties with the United States and the United Kingdom with creation of the AUKUS military alliance with the two nations in 2021.

Another controversial moment in his tenure occurred in 2019, when he had to issue a public apology for going on vacation to Hawaii when the country was battling deadly bushfires.

Morrison also came into the spotlight in August 2022 when his secret self-appointment to five ministries during the pandemic came to light.

Morrison assumed responsibility for the five portfolios, including health, finance, home affairs, treasury, as well as industry, science and energy and resources between March 2020 and May 2021 without disclosing it to the Australian people, nor to many of the heads of those ministries, who shared the portfolio with him for months without knowing it. EFE

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