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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 76 ..

ministerial responsibility in a Westminster system. I will defer to the Chief Minister and confess of minimalist knowledge—a perception but not a knowledge of the detail.

Further, I want to acknowledge the contribution of Mr Smyth, who pointed out that on many occasions we come here and play politics. Of course, this MPI has not been brought forward today out of some high-minded concern that, say, Ms Dundas might have about ministerial responsibility; it is just coincidental with a political situation which the opposition would want to exploit, quite naturally. I do think that both of those contributions today do put that in perspective.

Mrs Dunne has the experience of having worked in a minister’s office. Mr Humphries was not known as a great decision maker—“Gary the Uncertain”. He was known for decision avoidance. But he was good on the Assembly floor. He was good at building up the straw man and he was good at verballing. Nevertheless, he was here; he played the politics.

I jar a little bit, to use a lesser word than “resent”, at the introduction from time to time in these debates of references to Mrs Carnell, because the series of incidents involving the Bruce Stadium redevelopment are in a whole different class from some of the other matters that we have discussed here and I think that, again, we should get a grip and make sure of that when we talk about what a minister might know and might be expected to know versus other issues that involved Bruce Stadium.

I want to relate just a couple of incidents that occurred today, quite coincidentally. The first was that, when I arrived at the Assembly today, the Chief Minister arrived at the same time. He opened the boot of his car and he had a briefcase and a suitcase, a quite substantial suitcase, in it. I said, “Where are you off to?” He said, “No, that’s full of files.” In fact, that is a commentary on the workload that flows—

Mr Smyth: Haven’t you seen the files on your desk?

MR QUINLAN: Look at the desk here. The second incident was when Mr Wood came down here this morning with, as is his wont normally, a stack of files at least a foot and a half deep. That, again, represents the workload.

Mr Smyth: Ah, the workload did it!

MR QUINLAN: I think that the workload over here is conducted a little differently from how it was in a Carnell government, Mr Smyth, where I have before described you as a junior minister. The cabinet, as I recall, was Carnell, Walker and Lilley, and probably just as well. That absolves you guys, because you and Mr Stefaniak were in that cabinet room when some of the decisions in relation to Bruce Stadium were taken. But I do not think you can be held responsible for them on two grounds: firstly, Bruce Stadium was Mrs Carnell’s direct responsibility and, secondly, you were not involved.

I do thank Mrs Dunne for her contribution in recognising the workload and I just want to extend that recognition to what a minister does in the place. As I said, if, once in a while, we could just get a grip on how we can operate practically. Of course you want to make politics of it, no more so than Mrs Burke. I do not regularly listen to 2CC, but I have read the transcript and, if what is said in that transcript has been said, it is very serious. I am

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