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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 68 ..

MR STANHOPE: That was the position you put and that is the position that prevailed. You convinced the Assembly and the Assembly supported you on this position. As I say, in terms of ministerial responsibility as understood in this Assembly, this is the last word put by you.

During that same debate, the then Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety, Mr Humphries, supported the then Chief Minister’s position. He said:

…ministerial responsibility has never been that a minister must resign when a mistake is made by his department, no matter that that mistake might have very serious consequences.

That is the position that the then Attorney-General—the one before Mr Stefaniak—put. In taking this view, the then Attorney-General, Gary Humphries quoted—it may be the same passage, coincidentally, that Mr Smyth just quoted; perhaps not—a passage from House of Representatives Practice. This was Mr Humphries’s view, and he quoted it at the time with approval:

The evidence tends to suggest rather that while ministers continue to be held accountable to Parliament in the sense of being obliged to answer to it when Parliament so demands, and to indicate corrective action if that is called for, they themselves are not held culpable—and in consequence bound to resign or suffer dismissal—unless the action which stands condemned was theirs, or taken on their direction, or was action with which they ought obviously to have been concerned.

Mr Stefaniak, the then Minister for Education, also spoke during the debate for the Liberal Party, the then government, in relation to this issue. He had this to say:

At no time in the past 10 years has a Minister had to resign because of the actions of departmental staff.

This is Mr Stefaniak’s view of ministerial responsibility. We have had Mrs Carnell’s view, we have had Mr Humphries’ view and now we have Mr Stefaniak’s view. This is Mr Stefaniak’s view:

It has been when Ministers have acted improperly or have misled the Assembly that Ministers have been forced to resign or governments have fallen.

The Auditor-General gave quite an analysis of all of this. But we see, of course, what the position on ministerial responsibility is in relation to this place, as put by the Liberal Party. As I say, this was the last major debate on ministerial responsibility. They were the arguments of the then government. Those arguments prevailed and, on the basis of the strength of the arguments that you made, the motion was not carried. So we highlight your humbug and your hypocrisy here today in relation to these issues. In any event, you completely misunderstand any of the accepted notions of ministerial responsibility or Westminster accountability. You misunderstand them, you misquote them and you misuse them.

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