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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3564 ..
MR STEFANIAK (continuing):
Opposition against the Chief Minister. It is part of the naked ambition of Mr Stanhope and the Labor Party, who are not prepared to accept the outcome of the last election and are desperately attempting to usurp the election result by stealth. They are not prepared to wait for the next election in just under two years.
Mrs Carnell has indicated, quite rightly, that seven months after the tragic death of Katie Bender this Government was returned. If in two years' time, for whatever reason, the people of the Territory decide to make a change, so be it. But Labor is not prepared to wait. Labor is so arrogant that it believes it is still the natural party of government in the ACT. Even though the electors have not agreed with Mr Stanhope or his party over the past two elections, he is desperately attempting to grab power by the tactics he is using.
One could take this argument to ridiculous extremes, Mr Speaker. Should the Attorney-General resign because he is the Minister for police when a citizen is tragically murdered during a home invasion? Did the Opposition call for my colleague to resign or did it move a motion of no confidence in that regard? Of course not. Should the Health Minister resign because an operation goes wrong in a hospital due to the negligence of hospital staff, nurses and doctors? Of course not. Should Mr Berry have resigned over complications and problems in the hospitals when patients were not properly attended to and died in hospital because staff were not doing their job? Of course not.
Indeed, Mr Speaker, when I was last in private practice, I represented the family of someone who died tragically at a hospital because of inattention and some negligence problems that occurred there over the course of a night. Of course Mr Berry should not be held responsible for that, nor should my colleague Mr Moore if a similar situation occurs; and, tragically, they do occur from time to time. Should my colleague the Minister for Urban Services have to resign over a road death caused by the negligence of an ACTION bus driver or the negligence of a Totalcare work crew which, while attempting to fix up a road, improperly or incompetently caused some real problem to occur that led to the tragic death of someone not long afterwards? Of course not.
It is appropriate, Mr Speaker, that I quote Sir Billy Snedden in giving a talk on ministerial responsibility, amongst other things, back in 1980. He stated:
I continue to believe that in the matter of ministerial responsibility, in the strict sense of actions done in his name for him or on his behalf in his role as a Minister, his responsibility is to answer and explain to Parliament for errors or misdeeds but there is no convention which would make him absolutely responsible so that he must answer for, that is, to be liable to censure for all actions done under his administration.
I will read the last part again, because I think that it is terribly important. He said:
... there is no convention which would make him absolutely responsible so that he must answer for, that is, to be liable to censure for all actions done under his administration.
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