Page 555 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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When then, may I ask, is the Assembly entitled to raise the question of Mr Berry's competence or, for that matter, the extent to which he has truthfully told the house everything about this matter that he ought to have told the house? The answer, Madam Speaker, is here and now; this is the opportunity. There is only one body that can decide whether this house has been misled, and that is this house itself. No other body, no other inquirer, no other person, has the right to make the determination. Only this Assembly has that right. The Chief Minister, of course, can decide whether her Minister has misled her in what he might have said, and she could elect, in that circumstance, to sack him. The Minister himself could decide that he has not been entirely truthful with the public or the ACT Assembly and could decide to resign. It appears that those options are extremely unlikely to occur. It therefore falls on us, as the members of this house, to decide whether we have been misled, and, Madam Speaker, the evidence is extremely clear that we have been.
Ms Follett has suggested that we do not need to do this today; that we can await the outcome of the inquiry. That will reveal all. It will make clear what the circumstances are and it will resolve the issues that are before us today. With great respect, I find it hard to imagine how Professor Pearce can have laid before him any evidence that alters the fact of the company search which Mrs Carnell has tabled in this place. It shows very clearly that Mr Michael Dowd has never been a director of VITAB, but Mr Berry has told this place twice that he was. What is Professor Pearce going to find in that respect that somehow changes that? Absolutely nothing.
The Minister has told us that interstate TABs were competing for the VITAB contract, that we were in fierce competition for this important contract and to bring home the bacon for the ACT. We have proved, incontrovertibly, I would have thought, that that is not true, that it is a figment of the imagination of Mr Wayne Berry or his advisers. What light can Professor Pearce's inquiry possibly throw on that issue? None at all. It is the same for the other six issues which have been raised here. We are the custodians of the integrity of this house and we have the right to upbraid or hold to account any member of this place, any member of the Government, the Opposition or the cross bench, who wilfully or recklessly misleads this place, and the case made by Mrs Carnell and Mr De Domenico is that that has occurred in this case.
Madam Speaker, I wish to examine briefly the concept of ministerial responsibility and to make it clear that in our view there is a strong responsibility falling on Ministers, in particular, in this place to report the truth accurately to this place at all times. Ministerial responsibility is one of the keynotes or the keystones of the Westminster system, which is more or less the system that applies in Australian parliamentary government. At one time, when this policy first emerged at the end of the last century, it was the case that the principle was applied quite rigidly. A Minister was responsible for anything that he did or that his advisers or public servants did. In theory, and I am sure in practice on many occasions, some error, some mistake, some releasing of false information by agents or officers of a particular Minister would cause that Minister to resign his commission. That principle has been inherited in Australia but, of course, has been significantly modified, not just here, but in other places as well, particularly in Britain.
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