Page 104 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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one who refuses to take responsibility, and it is the one who is negligent in his duty to live by the community value of sharing knowledge.
One other thing Mr Stanhope said in his speech referred to Coroner Doogan getting into the issue of ministerial responsibility, which is, I think, at page 8 in the report. He says that the coroner was not listening to him; he was trying to explain, she took no notice of him and she should have done so. The coroner sent him, under section 55, some preliminary comments. I think this is worthy of quoting. She talks about the junior ministerial role and then says that in accordance with the conventions of the Westminster model he must accept responsibility for the mistakes of the ESB. Then she says publicly and acknowledges he said “Blame me”. Something he said must have actually registered with the coroner because she did not make that finding in the body of her report. She actually said there that he was the minister responsible for justice and community safety, which organisationally housed the ACT Emergency Services Bureau, and commented that he was acting as the Minister for Emergency Services on 18 January and on the previous day.
Mrs Dunne: So he verballed the coroner.
MR STEFANIAK: So it looks like he has verballed the coroner there, and next time, Mr Stanhope—
Mr Stanhope: Did she admit the mistake?
MR STEFANIAK: Well, obviously, because she has got it in there, mate; she has got it in there.
Mr Stanhope: Did she admit that she didn’t understand?
MR STEFANIAK: She has got it in there. Here we go: he is shooting the messenger once again.
Unfortunately, after four years, or maybe building up over four years, this Chief Minister and this government are in denial. You started off making those noble statements—“blame me”—and I think people would have accepted that if you had said not long after it, “We made mistakes. We made a lot of mistakes and, all right, we are sorry for those. There are things we could have learnt, and, yes, in that respect I should have warned you.” I think people could have accepted that. It would have been a carry-on from the noble statements you initially made.
But then we got the obfuscation, starting back in 2004, when the ducking and weaving started. Now you are shooting the messenger and now you are just attacking the coroner. What possible reason has the coroner got to put in all these spurious things that you say she should not have put in, these things that you say are not there in the evidence? You say that, on the basis that there are a lot of things you cannot remember because that is there in the evidence, you had very little recollection on certain points. That might be quite understandable, an obvious human trait: when you tend to look back on things you tend to put a light favourable to it, maybe subconsciously, when you are looking back, that is not actually right. She is sitting
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