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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1861 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

continue to implement that decision within the terms of the law. It does not need to be stated expressly every time, "Here is a job to go and do, Joe, but make sure you do it within the terms of the law". It is implicit in every task given to a public servant. The Minister, according to those statements I have outlined, is not responsible for the actions of that public servant, in the sense of him having to sacrifice himself or herself or to resign or be sacked merely because a mistake was made, unless there is a level of personal involvement. (Further extension of time granted) The Minister is not responsible "unless the action which stands condemned was theirs" - and I am quoting again - "or taken on their direction, or was action with which they ought obviously to have been concerned".

Mr Speaker, was the action condemned here the action of the Chief Minister? Was she responsible for drawing up the paperwork that omitted to do the guidelines? No, of course she was not. It is a job that is delegated in the legislation to a public servant. Why would a Chief Minister be doing it herself? Obviously the answer is no. Was the action taken on her direction? Did she direct that the public servant concerned should not complete a guideline under section 38? No, she did not. There is some suggestion that she must have done it deliberately, but where is the evidence that she did that? There is none, of course. Was it a matter with which she ought obviously to have been concerned? The legislation itself foreshadowed that it would be delegated down from the Minister, under section 67. The legislation itself expected that this would be done by a public servant, not by a Minister. Why then is it a matter with which she should obviously have been concerned? When the Chief Minister found out that there had been this omission, of course she was concerned about it, but until that point there was no obligation to have been involved in the matter in any personal, direct way. Under these standards, which are laid out clearly for us in all the texts that we have come across, there is no responsibility to resign or cause to be sacked.

Mr Speaker, that is the state of the law, not what has been put to you by those opposite today. The standard postulated by the Opposition that Ministers must resign if the law is broken in their name does not exist. The proof of that fact is that there are no precedents. Not one precedent has been cited in today's debate for resignation of a Minister or sacking of a Minister in these circumstances. There is no academic authority for this standard anywhere in any text that anyone has been able to point to. Even the Labor Party itself, when its servants have broken the law in the past, has not applied this standard to its Ministers, has not required their resignation or their sacking. Mr Speaker, that is the test before us tonight. Does this so-called requirement to resign exist? It clearly does not exist.

Mr Speaker, I want to run through some of the things that have been said earlier in the debate today by other people. Mr Stanhope said that there had been arrogant disregard of the law and he went on to say that there had been a past refusal to comply with the law. This again was referring to the Chief Minister. He implied very gingerly that there had been something deliberate on the Chief Minister's part but, as I have said before, he cited no evidence for that proposition. He did not offer any proof of that fact.

He did, however, go on to talk about the question of treating the loans in respect of Bruce as an investment. He did say in his remarks that he could guarantee that before 30 April of this year, or thereabouts, no-one in government had considered that spending on Bruce was an investment under the terms of the Financial Management Act. I make two

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