Page 1700 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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the lack of wisdom in making himself a hostage to fortune. You will live to regret it, old chap. The media and the community will see this outbreak of moral rectitude for exactly what it is - a case of pure political opportunism, something which the Opposition has turned into a virtue after only recently attempting to portray it as a sin. It depends which side of the house you are on and it depends entirely on your point of view, does it not, Leader of the Opposition?
MR CONNOLLY (5.34): I rise more in shame than in anger to second this motion. It is a shameful day for this Assembly and for this Territory when we are forced to move a motion to censure a Minister who refuses to stand down from the ministry following a conviction before the magistrates court in these circumstances. It is doubly shameful that we have had to wait two hours to move this motion because of the Government's desperate attempts to avoid confronting the issue.
Mr Speaker, ministerial responsibility is a fundamental element in self-government. We have inherited a system of government here which models that in Britain and that in the other States of Australia. Although ministerial responsibility is nowhere set out in a statute, it is clearly accepted as the elementary basis of parliamentary proceedings.
I cite a case with which the Attorney-General would be familiar and to which he referred some time earlier, the famous Engineers case in 1921 where in a majority decision the principle of ministerial responsibility was referred to as the "greatest institution which existed in the empire and which pertains to every constitution and establishment in the empire".
In later cases Justice Isaacs referred to it as being "of paramount importance to Australia as a self-governing community", and more recently, in 1975, Sir Garfield Barwick in McKinley's case said:
The Australian Constitution is built upon confidence in a system of parliamentary government with ministerial responsibility.
Mr Speaker, this Government's refusal to accept those principles of ministerial responsibility reflect shame on this Assembly, every member in it and every citizen of this Territory.
The citizens of Sydney were treated on Sunday morning over their cornflakes, when they read the joke page on the back of the Sun Herald, to a reference to this Minister representing the ACT in Perth at a ministerial conference to discuss reduction of the blood alcohol limit. They read how this Minister remains a Minister in this Government despite his conviction. That is what this Government's approach to ministerial responsibility has led to - the
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