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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3559 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
Ministers are required to accept higher standards than other members or those prevailing in the community? Does she still accept that the bar is set higher for Ministers and that she, as Chief Minister, has an even more pressing obligation? We are entitled to ask these questions on behalf of the community and the community is entitled to an unequivocal answer, just as it is entitled to anticipate that the answer will be yes. The community is entitled to see those commitments honoured, in this case, in the only appropriate way.
Mr Speaker, as early as 10 October 1997, the Chief Minister accepted responsibility for what happened when the Canberra Hospital was imploded. On that day, she told Detective Sergeant Ranse, investigating the matter:
... I'm the leader and therefore I wear it - whatever happens.
In more recent days, the Chief Minister's willingness to accept responsibility has been more vocal. On 4 November, the day after the coroner handed down his report, she told ABC radio:
Look, I'm Chief Minister, therefore I feel, always, feel responsible for anything that happens at any level of government ... it's part of the job.
And later:
... but ultimately at the end of the day I'm Chief Minister. It's that simple. I fully accept that.
Fine words. But somewhat of a contrast to another comment the Chief Minister made to the police officers:
Remember - it's very important - I'm actually not the Minister responsible. I don't run Totalcare. Trevor Kaine is the minister responsible ... those sorts of day to day things don't actually flow through my office at all simply because I'm not the minister responsible.
Words, of course, are empty without action to back them, and what has the Chief Minister done to discharge the responsibility that she says she accepts, the acceptance she has repeated like a mantra? The answer is that she has done nothing. That failure to act is central to the motion that we are debating today. The Chief Minister says that she accepts responsibility, but she has done nothing. In contemporary political life, arrogance and politicians are often linked. But the Chief Minister, in her failure to discharge the responsibility that she says she bears, has displayed an arrogance that almost defies description. Perhaps it is not unexpected.
This is, of course, the Chief Minister who is proud of the can-do culture that breaks a law to build a football stadium, who defies an Assembly request for papers and declares contracts with football teams to be too secret to be revealed to the parliament,
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