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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1860 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
That is what the textbook on this subject says. That is what the bible, if you like, says about this subject, Mr Speaker. We have heard a lot about deceit today, about how this side of the chamber is being deceitful. Is it not strange that they have not bothered to quote from this textbook on ministerial responsibility to explain to the house what the standard actually is.
That text, unfortunately, is some years old and you might say, "Maybe it is out of date now. Maybe that standard no longer applies. Maybe we have a high standard these days". I would like to quote a slightly more contemporary exposition on this subject. It is a paper - and I hesitate to name the person, since he has already been referred to today in the debate - by the editor of the Canberra Times in a paper he presented entitled "Ministerial Responsibility for Personal Staff". This is a very interesting quote, and I want to put it on the record:
In a golden age, some think, a minister of the Crown took absolute responsibility for everything which occurred under his administration and, if some mistake or malfeasance occurred, then the minister bravely took responsibility for the error, no matter how remote his own personal responsibility was, and submitted his resignation to the Prime Minister.
Since this golden age, if ever it existed, much has changed. Government has moved into the social welfare field, intervenes far more actively in the economy, has acquired a much more centralised role in law and order, and regulates in almost every area of human life.
It would be beyond the wit of any mortal to be across the details of each individual piece of administration, in which probably several million decisions a day are made touching the rights or property of its citizens.
He went on to say:
... it was unreasonable to hold that a minister must go for any mistake in routine administration.
We develop thus a notion of some separation between administration and policy, some allowance to the level of remoteness of incident in question from the minister.
They are the expositions of ministerial responsibility today, not the claptrap which we have heard from those opposite.
Mr Wood: That has nothing to do with this.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is exactly to do with this, Mr Wood. It is precisely to do with this. It is a question of appropriate delegation of the administration of decisions made by government to those who are expected to perform that implementation, that administration, within the terms of the law. Obviously, every task which is given to a public servant is given with the implication that they will pass that work on and
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