Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1788 ..

clearly indicated that his idea or ideal of ministerial responsibility was broader than criminal behaviour or “deliberately” misleading the Assembly.

Why then, in the government’s code of conduct published in February 2004—after the 18 January 2003 bushfires—does the Chief Minister alter his opinion that misleading the Assembly was broader than deliberately doing so and come back to the qualifying phrase “wilfully mislead”. This is a puzzle.

I do not know whether there is anything suspicious in this puzzling change from the qualifying statement in the February 2004 code of conduct to the Chief Minister’s unqualified statement of 21 June 2001. We do however know that it is not the first occasion in which Mr Stanhope, as Chief Minister, has misled the Assembly, because on 6 March this year he corrected a reply he made the day before. Yet on 4 March our Chief Minister speaks of “some recollection” with Dr Maxine Cooper on a fairly benign matter, while on 3 April he speaks of his recollection of a conversation with Mr Rolandson about fire hazards to public housing units.

This lead me to wonder—in view of the Chief Minister’s selective recall—if there was not some other reason for the amnesia apparent in Mr Stanhope’s behaviour regarding the crucial telephone calls in question. A check of medical websites identified a neurological condition known as selective hippocampal lesions, which can cause recall deficits. Whether Mr Stanhope suffers from this condition, which I doubt, or whether he has selectively quoted from and adapted his own statements and party’s code of conduct to suit his current situation, is beside the fundamental point. He has misled the Assembly and should no longer have the confidence of this house.

MR STEFANIAK (12.01): The Chief Minister talked effectively about a simple rehash of what is already on the public record—a lot of dates and times which are simply on the public record. He did say, however, that it seemed that, between the cabinet meeting on the afternoon of 16 January and about 12.00 or 12.30 on 18 January, there is very little recollection. He said he did not mislead the coroner. Then how come the coroner invited him to come back and give further evidence?

He said a couple of other things that I found a little strange. Given that this man rarely, if ever, goes to the first floor—I have seen him down there a bit since this motion of no confidence was first moved—why on earth did he walk past Ms Tucker’s office after a budget lockup? Despite comments by my colleague Mr Smyth in the debate earlier today, he has still made no mention of the Red Hill lookout incident and sighting on the evening of Friday 17 January. We have yet to hear about that.

He has a medical examination. That may have some credibility, although I doubt it—my colleague Mr Cornwell has referred to that already—except when one considers how convenient it is and how many other senior bureaucrats and other officials have had a very similar selective memory loss. These persons were not involved in the rescue of, I think, 13 January as the Chief Minister was.

All of us—or at least those of us who are my age and older—can remember where we were when we heard the news in 1963 that JFK, the President of the United States, had been assassinated. I can recall being on the steps of my home in Narrabundah. My

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .