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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 73 ..

reading Hansard in terms of what I have said in the past, but I will not go into that in too much detail at the moment. From what I am hearing around the corridors, I will probably have an opportunity to do so later this week.

The really interesting thing for me that is coming out of this conversation today and the event that it is related to is that when you look at the question of ministerial responsibility and whether responsibility is being taken you find that it gets down to questions about intent. For example, when we were looking at the situation concerning Mrs Carnell’s handling of the hospital implosion, lots of factors influenced my decision that responsibility had not been taken. I listed them in Hansard. There was a series of events which showed to me that there had been a certain disregard and recklessness in how the then Chief Minister had handled the implosion.

When I look at this event I can see some real differences. In a way, I see Ms Gallagher as the fall guy in that it is being suggested that she has to take absolute responsibility for this event, but if you look into the history of the matter you will see that the accusation of ministerial incompetence or lack of responsibility applies equally to Bill Stefaniak, Gary Humphries in terms of the Community Advocate’s office, Simon Corbell, probably the current Chief Minister and Ms Gallagher if we are talking about the statutory requirement not being met.

Let’s look at what has happened here in context. Let’s also look at the responsibility of the whole Assembly and the performance of the whole Assembly—I include myself in that—in terms of the responsibility that was taken or not taken. Every single person in this place had an opportunity to make strong statements about the failure that we are talking about now, but it was the minister herself who made the strong statements.

Mr Smyth says that Mr Cornwell was on to it and he was right in asking questions on notice. Mr Cornwell’s questions on notice were related to mandated persons and the sharp end of the issue with respect to the death of a child. His questions on notice were not about the particular issue that is now being discussed, that is, the failure to accept ministerial responsibility.

We have not seen evidence from the opposition that they took notice of this matter and made statements on it, apart from the scandalous things Mrs Burke is now saying on radio, which I imagine she will have to withdraw. As a mandated person, I guess that she will need to report and give details to the police on what she has been saying. Mrs Burke is telling the Canberra community on radio that she knows children are being abused in care, yet she has not contacted any of the people who actually take an interest in that. I am a bit worried about that. I guess she was not really thinking when she was speaking. Maybe she has made a very serious mistake. Another really interesting issue here is that—

Mrs Burke: They have been advised to go to the authorities and have gone and got no results.

MS TUCKER: Maybe Mrs Burke will seek leave to speak to explain her statements on radio and talk to the police. We would all be feeling much better for it.

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