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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 75 ..

responsibility to read the report of the Community Services and Social Equity Committee of the Assembly and her staff were also reading the report, as were the departments.

Even this Assembly is looking at the role of everybody in this building—of volunteers, of members and their responsibilities and how those responsibilities are put forth. I think we need to have an atmosphere in which departments can provide frank and fearless advice and know that that advice will be acted upon in the right way, where Assembly committees and members of this parliament can ask questions of ministers and departments and get truthful answers, and not have to ask whether everybody is meeting their statutory requirements.

I think we all have a responsibility. In fact, it is part of the oath that we take when we stand for this place to uphold the law and to respect the law. I have been with many of you at various Australia Day ceremonies at which we have talked about Australian law, the oath of citizenship and the responsibility that we have to this place. I think that this debate today has gone off the track a bit. We are talking about who read which report, when they read it, what they were doing at the time and who said what on radio, when really we need to come back to the fundamental issue of what that responsibility means, to whom we are responsible, why we are responsible and how we can set up an environment in which this responsibility is second nature and is not one that we always have to question.

Having governments and oppositions which continue to swap sides on issues and which continue to try to put political point scoring issues above the actual issues that are being dealt with does not build that community faith and does not build an atmosphere where things can move forward. Ministerial responsibility is a fundamental part of the Westminster parliamentary system, but we have had instances where ministers were responsible for their department’s actions to a point which was almost ludicrous. The colour TV incident of 50-odd years ago is one that springs to mind.

But we have seen it go the other way. Ms Tucker has already alluded to the children overboard saga whereby ministers stepped away from every single action that their departments had taken. I think we need to look at how ministers enact their responsibility, how they work with their departments and how we, as the Assembly, work with the ministers and the departments to bring about the best outcome for the entire community.

The debate around particular issues relating to children’s services and responsibility for them will continue. I do not think that this will be the last that we will hear about that. I think that we do need to focus on the core issues and not continue to try to throw mud across the chamber in an attempt to make ourselves feel better in terms of politics.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (4.46): I want to acknowledge a positive contribution to this debate by Mrs Dunne and Mr Smyth. They made it this morning rather than this afternoon. Mrs Dunne did discuss the many roles that she had to carry. Of course, that situation is compounded when it comes to being a minister. There is a need for us, to some extent, to get a grip. I will not go into the technicalities of

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