Page 30 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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I was not given the opportunity to challenge these mistaken conclusions or to correct some very basic errors of fact. I was not accorded my most basic and fundamental right to bring forward evidence to substantiate my own recollections of events. I was not told that there was even a possibility that adverse comments might be made against me—not once.
I was not advised that it might be in my best interests to be legally represented, and I was not. Only after the fact was I given the opportunity to make a detailed blow-by-blow response to the section 55 notice. I did so, and that response is appended to the coroner’s report, although I regret that the coroner does not seem to have accorded it any weight.
It does not give me pleasure to stand here and dispute the findings of a judicial officer of this territory. But the false conclusions, erroneous suppositions, factual errors and comments that stray beyond the jurisdiction of a court cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged and to pass into history as truths.
There are a number of factual errors contained in the coroner’s comments. To give just one example, the coroner states that I was the responsible minister “at all relevant times” in the period that was the subject of her inquiry, and the dates are emblazoned upon the cover of her report—from 8 January 2003 to 18 January 2003. It is simply not true that I was the responsible minister during the entire time. It is wrong on any possible analysis of the evidence.
At one level the coroner seems to have been misinformed as to the nature of executive government in the ACT. Contrary to the coroner’s belief, the ACT does not have a system of junior and senior ministers where one minister is answerable to another and where one carries ultimate responsibility for the work of another. We can perhaps guess how this misunderstanding by the coroner occurred. The peculiarities of our small ministry mean that it is commonplace for one agency to answer to more than one minister. It is so in the current Assembly, by way of example, where the agency known as territory and municipal services serves two of my colleagues, Mr Hargreaves and Mr Barr. That does not mean that one is a senior minister and one a junior minister. Their roles are distinct; their lines of responsibility are clearly drawn.
There was no junior minister or senior minister at the time of the 2003 fires. The Minister for Emergency Services at that time was not, as the coroner states, subservient to or answerable to the Attorney-General, just because both happened to be served by the Department of Justice and Community Services. The Attorney-General was not a senior minister. The Minister for Emergency Services was not a junior minister. The coroner is simply misinformed in her deduction that, because I was the Attorney-General, at the time I was ministerially responsible at all relevant times for emergency services. That is not how government works in the ACT.
The coroner may not have known this, but the individuals sitting opposite me today most certainly do. The fact of the matter is that I had been the responsible minister—that is, the Acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services—for less than a day on the day the fires reached the urban fringe. I was not the minister at all relevant times. Even then, in practical and legal terms, this responsibility lasted only until I vested my
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