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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1866 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

occurred under her leadership as Chief Minister and Treasurer. She accepts that responsibility but to sack her in circumstances where there is no personal culpability would simply be wrong.

I want to ask one further question of members in this place. If we pass this motion tonight we are, as I have made clear, setting a very big standard that imposes an extraordinary weight on every Minister who sits on these treasury benches. Are members confident that they will be able to apply this standard which, according to those opposite, should be applied tonight to this Government to each successive government which sits on this side of the chamber? Would they be able to require that every Minister in that circumstance should resign?

Let me give you a small illustration of how heavy that burden might be. Just a few days ago a judge of the Supreme Court ruled that something like 600 domestic violence orders made over the last few years by the Magistrates Court had been made unlawfully. Each of those 600 orders, potentially, is illegal. It is not a case of the law being defective. It apparently is a misreading of the law by the Magistrates Court. I say this without having seen Justice Higgins's written judgment, but that is what I understand from the people in the court is the gist of what he has ruled. Mr Speaker, who should resign for that - the magistrates, the Chief Magistrate, the first law officer of the Territory, or perhaps the whole Government? There are a few giggles and laughs about this, but what is the standard? You are saying that when the law gets broken someone has to pay for that. The law has been broken here in a big way. There are 600 people out there, not counting children of a particular partnership, who may be at risk because of the absence of those orders. If I am still Attorney-General after tonight, I am coming back into this chamber in the next couple of days with legislation to retrospectively reinstate those orders.

You ask yourselves this question: If you are imposing a standard here tonight that Ministers must resign when the law is broken in an area under their control, can you live by that standard in government? You do not need much sense to realise that the answer to that must be no. Of course, you cannot live with it.

Mr Speaker, I want to put on the record that I will not be nominating for Chief Minister in the event that the motion tonight is carried. I will treat it as my very pleasant duty and privilege to be able to nominate Kate Carnell as Chief Minister of the ACT if this motion is carried tonight. If you do not believe me, put me to the test.

In closing, I ask you to contrast the behaviour of this Minister with that of the Minister who was last sacked by the Assembly, namely, Mr Berry. Five million dollars was flushed down the drain, never to be seen again, in the VITAB scandal. By contrast, no money has been lost to the Territory in respect of the Bruce matter. (Further extension of time granted) Certainly, the cost of the project has increased but, traditionally, governments do not resign because costs blow out. They never have in the past that I am aware of, and I do not think they should tonight either.

Tonight the present Chief Minister and Treasurer has come back to this place - as she has done before today, incidentally - and apologised to the public of the ACT for making a mistake in respect of this matter. The man over there who made, arguably, an horrendous mistake in respect of VITAB took nearly three years to come back to this place and apologise for the mistake that he had made in respect of VITAB - almost three

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