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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1792 ..

Assembly and along the line has, it seems, misled the Coroner’s Court and the people of Canberra. The fourth edition of House of Representatives Practice says at page 49:

In a practical sense, a Minister may resign, not as an admission of culpability, but rather to remove pressure from the Government while serious criticisms of his or her capacity or integrity are properly and dispassionately assessed. Alternatively, a Minister may be given leave from ministerial duties for the same purpose…When responsibility for a serious matter can be clearly attached to a particular Minister personally, it is of fundamental importance to the effective operation of responsible government that he or she adhere to the convention of individual responsibility.

In a statement, which I think was appropriate and that went down very well at the time, the Chief Minister said on 20 January last year, “Don’t blame these other people, blame me.” He said, in effect, that the buck stopped with him.

Mr Speaker, we are not suggesting the resignation of the Labor government. There are precedents in this place that indicate that a Chief Minister is not necessarily forced to resign as a result of a vote of no confidence. What we are suggesting is that the Chief Minister honour his comments made on 20 January and the commitment given when elected Chief Minister. He should either stand down immediately or, if he will not do so, the Assembly should support—and indeed I would suggest it has no real option not to support, if it is fair dinkum—the motion of no confidence in the Chief Minister.

MRS CROSS (12.15): The Chief Minister, Mr Stanhope, was acting minister for emergency services during the most devastating period of the January 2003 bushfires, yet he has said for a long time that he did not and does not recall anyone contacting him about the fire for two full days leading up to the culminating firestorm on the afternoon of 18 January. In fact, his latest expression of that alarming state of affairs was made in his written statement to the coroner on 12 March, with the words:

I had no memory of any specific or direct contact of me by any person about the fire between the time of the cabinet briefing on the morning of January 16 and the call from Mr Keady at lunchtime on January 18.

Then it was disclosed last week that during this period there had in fact been specific and direct contact with the acting emergency services minister, Mr Stanhope, as well as attempts to make contact with him. In the case of the successful contact made, he continues to have no recollection of either its occurrence or its content. And the other party to that call, Mr Tim Keady, similarly has no recollection of the call having been made or of what it was about.

In the eyes of many, this state of affairs among those in senior positions of responsibility in the emergency services hierarchy, during an emergency situation, is very odd, to say the least. So, rather than jumping to conclusions based on what the men themselves are saying about what might or might not have happened, we need to look at this curious phenomenon a bit more objectively.

Before we go into detail, let us first note that both Mr Stanhope and Mr Keady held positions of serious responsibility and duty towards the wellbeing and safety of the ACT community. We may therefore assume that they hold or held those positions because they are intelligent, experienced and capable men who are dedicated to carrying out their

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