Page 1706 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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Sitting suspended from 5.53 to 8.00 pm
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (8.00): Mr Speaker, I am taking the opportunity as well to state, as the Attorney, what standard of ministerial conduct we should adopt. The Chief Minister has distilled the British and Australian parliamentary practice, and I will repeat it so that we can rejoin the debate clearly: where there has been a clear breach of personal propriety involving criminal activity or use of office for personal gain; or where there has been a serious administrative error for which the Minister accepts personal responsibility, which is the doctrine of ministerial responsibility; or where there has been a clear attempt to mislead the parliament.
I endorse what my colleague Mr Connolly said in relation to the statements in the Engineers case about the duties and obligations borne by a Minister of the Crown. Those concepts are beyond dispute, in my view, but what is the real issue before us tonight? The mover of this motion, Mr Berry, said on television only a short while ago tonight, "There is a Minister who morally should not be here". They are Mr Berry's exact words.
Mr Moore: Exactly, right. Well spoken.
MR COLLAERY: So, the real issue - and I note that Mr Moore accepts that - is a moral argument. The real issue is, as has been put to us, that there is a duty on Mr Duby as a Minister. I suppose they are saying that he has no ordinary professional calling; he is a Minister, and that is special. No-one disputes that. You are saying that he is obliged, among other things, to uphold the criminal law. As Mr Wood has put so succinctly, Mr Duby is allowed to display the accepted frailties of life. In other words, this Assembly does not have to be a meeting of the paragons of virtue of Canberra, does it, Mr Wood?
Mr Wood: Repeat all that I said and put it into perspective.
MR COLLAERY: Certainly. This raises the question of what standard this house should apply to its own members, including its Ministers. It is a standard that we set in Canberra against the background of our social fabric. You have already seen, Mr Speaker, that Mr Duby's conviction is not within the conventional prescriptions enunciated by the Chief Minister in those statements which have not been attacked.
Mr Connolly: Murder is not for personal gain, but you would sack him for that.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, I repeat for Mr Connolly's advice that one of the first prescriptions is "where there has been a clear breach of personal propriety involving criminal activity". I would suggest to Mr Connolly that that includes murder.
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