Page 2807 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 August 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The Canberra Times editorial of today—and I thought it was a pretty fair editorial—seems to gauge pretty well the mood out in the community. It starts by saying:
The ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, is amazingly confident that his management of the bushfire inquiry has not hurt him politically, and that it cannot do so. It has—even if it did not affect the Labor vote at the 2004 election, because people were withholding judgment not so much about the management of the aftermath but about the fires themselves. Nearly a year later, and with no further progress to report, the ACT Government’s attempts to undermine the inquiry process, limit the scope of the inquiry and insulate Jon Stanhope and nine of his senior bureaucrats from a critical examination of their roles, is causing considerable concern, and raising doubts about his political management.
One would think the Chief Minister would start seeing the writing on the wall and start seeing that people want answers. He should indeed see and appreciate that his role of Attorney-General is, as I have said on a number of occasions but it bears repeating, to back the coroner. Fingleton and other experts have said that. It is to back the coroner, even if the government might end up being criticised for doing something, even if some government servants might be criticised, which happens with coronial inquests. Governments are meant to take it on the chin, get on with the job and improve the position so that those situations, hopefully, never arise again and we learn from mistakes made.
Mr Stanhope, we are all human: you are human; I am human; the opposition is human; the government is human; the nine public servants are human; the people affected by the fires are all human. We all make mistakes. Past coronial inquests, very rigorous in Australia and certainly rigorous in the ACT, have benefited the community through that rigour and through the decisions taken by coroners and recommendations made, sometimes not popular recommendations with governments but things governments wear.
I remind Mr Stanhope again of precedents in the ACT such as R v Michael Somes ex parte Francis Woods in 1998 where Mr Erskine, who appeared for the ACT government, backed the coroner’s right to continue in an appeal which was taken by some public servants—one public servant, at least—in terms of apprehended bias. What Mr Stanhope did as Attorney-General was unprecedented. I think that is all the more telling reason for him now to back this motion by the opposition.
Paragraph (2) of the motion deals with not funding any further legal appeals. The Attorney-General said some amazing things yesterday. He reverted to his usual attack on the opposition in terms of saying that it is attacking public servants. He made some absolutely spurious, idiotic claims to try to turn it back on the opposition, in terms of claims the opposition has made on the public purse. The same probably applied in 1995, if you care to look, Chief Minister. Those things occurred. But you showed, by going off on a complete tangent and attacking the opposition about attacking public servants, it is an absolute nonsense. Might I tell you, attorney, I know some of those nine; I probably know some of them better than you do.
I go back to what I said earlier: people can make mistakes. People do make mistakes. You do; I do; we all do. We need a rigorous coronial process, if need be. I have never,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .