Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4124 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I am not really interested in the process here. It may be legal and proper, but it is not ethical or moral to support people on that level of income to that degree when you will not support the people in the community who are the most disadvantaged and who need public housing because it is housing of last resort. The cut-off point for it is still below the poverty line.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.01): Mr Speaker, I rise to support the position put solidly and well by my colleague Mr Corbell. The position that we are debating here today really goes to the question of responsibility and the need for the Chief Minister to accept responsibility for the management of her department and for public administration generally in the ACT. In fact, the basic proposition being debated here is the simple refusal by the Chief Minister to accept responsibility and her attempts from the very outset simply to deflect, as she always does, all responsibility onto others. I go back to the day on which the issue arose - on 1 December or thereabouts - when the Chief Minister just instinctively and automatically said that the payments were made pursuant to public sector guidelines put in place by the Labor Government. In a television comment that the Chief Minister made on or about that time, exactly the same was said - "In fact, all we did was abide by arrangements put in place by the former Labor Government". The issue was run extensively by the electronic media and in the Canberra Times. The report in the Canberra Times indicated that the staff were entitled to payments under guidelines put in place by the former Labor Government.

The Chief Minister put the line, "It has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with decisions made while I was Chief Minister. It has nothing to do with decisions made by officials in a department that I oversight and accept responsibility for. It is all to do with the Labor Party. It is all to do with the previous Government. It has nothing to do with me". We have had the instinctive and automatic deflection of the Chief Minister saying, "Oh, no, it has nothing to do with me. It is all to do with somebody else. It is somebody else's fault". If it is not the Labor Party's fault, if she cannot pin it on the Labor Party, then, by innuendo, it is the fault of an official, it is the fault of a public servant. That is the way it works. The first line of defence is to blame the Labor Party. The second line of defence is to blame a public servant: Do not name them, pretend that you support them, pretend that you will die in a ditch for them, but ensure that the buck stops with them, ensure that the buck does not get past the public servant. We have seen it in relation to Bruce Stadium. We have seen it in relation to the implosion. We are now seeing it in relation to this accommodation allowance issue. In fact, the buck stops, once again, with Linda Webb. I think that the buck has stopped with Linda Webb a couple of times, but she has shuffled off the stage now.

Mr Quinlan: Shoved off the stage.

MR STANHOPE: Perhaps "shuffled" was the wrong word. That is the essence of what we are debating here - that instinctive response of blaming somebody else; never accept responsibility, never take responsibility seriously. Looking at what the Chief Minister said on 2 December, just a week ago, how the worm has turned, how we have come full circle. A week ago, absolutely, the issue was just about the guidelines in 1994. Then we discovered bit by bit, dragging blood out of a stone, that the 1994 guidelines were amended and it was not about the 1994 guidelines; it was about the 1994 guidelines as amended under her administration. That is what we are talking about now. It is like

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .