Page 1714 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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I think, Mr Speaker, it is worth bearing in mind that there are many people casting stones around this Assembly who probably live in glasshouses. We have all, at various times, broken laws. I do not think anyone is going to rise in this place and say that he or she has not broken a law. I have certainly broken laws. I have traffic infringements against my name. I am sure that everybody else in this chamber has. The question becomes at what level a particular offence is serious enough to constitute a ground for someone's resignation.
I have looked at the practice in this area to try to find out what the precedents are. Those quoted by members opposite simply are not satisfactory. They cited the case of Mr Sinclair, who resigned during the period that he was on trial for a particular matter. The offence with which he was charged was an extremely serious one. It was a charge, I think, of forgery. He resigned for the duration of his trial because, had the offence been proven, he would undoubtedly have had to resign his place in the ministry.
Mr Duby was never required, nor ought he have been, to resign in the course of the proceedings against him because, even if a conviction had been recorded at that point, he would not have committed an offence serious enough to constitute his withdrawal from the ministry. That is the simple, indisputable fact about this matter. No precedent was cited by members opposite for a member of a ministry having to resign for an offence similar to that brought against Mr Duby.
Mr Connolly: What about allowing him to stay in the ministry? Do you know of one who could stay in the ministry following this sort of conviction?
MR HUMPHRIES: I am glad you asked that question, Mr Connolly. I cannot find any directly analogous case. No such cases come to my attention.
Ms Follett: That's right. It's interesting.
MR HUMPHRIES: I very much doubt, Ms Follett, that there have been no cases in the last 20 years in which a Minister of the Crown, at some place in Australia, has committed a drink-driving offence. I am positive that could not have been the case. It is highly unlikely to have been the case. What is more likely is that a person was convicted of an offence such as that but was not asked to resign and did not resign because there was no expectation in the place in which he sat that he should resign.
There are two cases, since Mr Connolly has raised the matter. I think it was in the early part of last year, although I am not quite sure about the date, that Mr Ted Pickering, the New South Wales Minister for Police, was convicted of a fairly serious traffic offence, and that was not just his second offence but one which constituted a
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