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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1800 ..

Why not say that? Well, one reason might be that the Chief Minister did not want to say that Mr Keady did not call him because Mr Keady did call him, as we know now, not on the Friday night but on the Saturday morning and the Chief Minister already knew, at the time of my asking this question on 10 March 2004, that Mr Keady had called prior to his apparent spontaneous decision to visit the Emergency Services Bureau headquarters to see what was happening. So, we have the carefully chosen words “I have no idea why Mr Keady did, or did not, do anything,” which, in the best lawyer’s style, avoids admitting any knowledge not only of Mr Keady’s motivations but his actions as well.

The community is heartily sick of this unstatesmanlike, evasive, lawyer-style defences—“to the best of my knowledge”, “I cannot recall” and “I cannot remember”—to preface every answer. Today, here in his feeble defence against the charges in this motion, the statement which really takes the cake is words to the effect of “I was overwhelmed with information and consequently cannot remember the details of the phone calls” in question.

While it is only human—and one is justified from time to time to use these terms; we are all human and sometimes we have to use these terms—the community does not expect its Chief Minister to make these qualifications all the time and to offer absolutely nothing else, but that is what the community and we here in this place have become accustomed to. This is not statesmanlike; this is not transparency; this is in fact a form of misleading, and this is unacceptable.

On top of this, it is also clear that, as acting minister for emergency services, Mr Stanhope asked no questions and received no information in that critical period of time. This is beginning to be a recurring theme of this government: ask no questions, receive no information.

However, in the statement given to the Assembly by the Chief Minister on 4 May 2004, only 30 minutes before the ACT budget was to be handed down by his deputy, he admits that telephone records revealed that the then Executive Director of the Emergency Services Bureau, Mr Mike Castle, placed a call to his mobile phone at 7.14 on the evening of 17 January. This six-second call was diverted to his message bank and he did not recall receiving any message as a result of that call from Mr Castle. This revelation is contrary to all other information that was given to the Assembly, the coroner and the community during the previous 16 months.

The revelations do not end there. In his statement on 4 May 2004, the Chief Minister also reveals that his scrutinising staff found a telephone call made by the Chief Minister, our acting minister for emergency services, on 18 January 2003 to the head of the Department of Justice and Community Safety, Mr Tim Keady. The call was placed at 10.09 am and lasted for six minutes and 45 seconds. It appeared, according to the Chief Minister, that this call may have been in response to a call from Mr Keady to him at 9.10 am which was diverted to his message bank while he was having coffee with his wife.

It is true that the acting minister for emergency services did not ask any questions, but he would have received information if he had been disciplined enough to check his message

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