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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2639 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

talking about blame. It is about solving the problem. And that is the approach that this government will continue to take.

MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Since the Chief Minister chose deliberately not to answer my question, I ask her-

MR SPEAKER: It is her option, Mr Kaine, how she answers the question.

MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, it is not her option. I am begging your pardon.

MR SPEAKER: How she answers the question is her option.

MR KAINE: I would like an honest answer to my supplementary question. Is your concept of the principle of ministerial responsibility, which you so clearly enunciated in 1994, still the same, or do you now have an understanding of that responsibility as being a moveable feast-you can blame somebody else, SOCOG, the opposition or snow on the football field?

MR SPEAKER: Chief Minister, I think that is a very difficult question.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, maybe I can make it a bit clearer for Mr Kaine. We believe that the same rules apply now as probably have applied throughout the Assembly, and certainly applied with regard to Mr Berry. Ministers are responsible for acts that they take and for other, I suppose, actions that they ought reasonably have known about-if they were incorrect, wrong, criminal or whatever. Mr Speaker, there is no way-

Mr Kaine: And the Attorney-General didn't know that he was being conned by his senior public servants?

MR SPEAKER: Order, please! Mr Kaine, you have asked a supplementary.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, it would be absolute rubbish if we were to get to a situation in this place where somehow it would be a minister's responsibility if the grass dies at Bruce Stadium, if a patient dies in a hospital, if somebody that people thought was guilty gets off in a criminal trial, or if somebody has a car accident in one of the streets that Brendan is responsible for.

MR QUINLAN: My question to the Chief Minister relates to the Bruce Stadium playing surface. Today's Canberra Times quotes the President of the Australian Olympic Committee, Mr John Coates, as stating that the ACT government had ignored games organisers' advice on the grass and "took the cheap option" in securing turf from Cairns. This claim was confirmed by Mr Graham Richardson at today's National Press Club luncheon. The newspaper quotes you as acknowledging that SOCOG had warned that the Cairns option was "not without risk". Today I have heard you state, and distinctly imply, that the acquisition of Cairns turf was a joint decision. There are clear contradictions in these sets of statements. Which statements are true, which statements are falsehoods?

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