Page 39 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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The responsibility of ministers individually to Parliament is not mere fiction ... Parliament is the correct forum, the only forum, to test or expose ministerial administrative competence or fitness to hold office.
The duties of ministers in this legislature are set out in the ACT ministerial code of conduct. The code makes it clear that ministers are accountable to the Assembly and, through it, to the people of Canberra. Similar principles are set out in various guidelines and codes in other Westminster style parliamentary systems.
In all these jurisdictions the vital element of ministerial responsibility is the requirement that each minister be prepared to answer to parliament, in the form of explanation or defence, for their actions and those of their departments. The principle was well expressed by Lord Justice Sir Richard Scott, who headed a United Kingdom inquiry into arms sales to Iraq, when he observed:
… obligation of ministers to give information about the actions of their departments and to give information and explanations for the actions and omissions of their civil servants lies at the heart of ministerial responsibility.
Thus, when public servants make an error, the minister is expected to explain to parliament what went wrong and to undertake that the error or deficiency will be remedied and that measures will be taken to prevent its repetition. Ultimate accountability then lies with the electorate, informed by the minister’s explanations and by the opposition’s challenging of that defence.
In the four years since 18 January 2003, this government has gone to extraordinary lengths to identify the deficiencies and omissions in our emergency service systems that might have contributed to the severity of the 2003 fires. And we have gone to extraordinary lengths to remedy those deficiencies and omissions.
The coroner has concluded that a failure to aggressively attack the fires in the first few days after they ignited on 8 January was one factor that led to the firestorm on 18 January. We know there were other contributing factors, many of them historical, including the management of the bush and forests surrounding Canberra over many decades, and the structure and organisation of our emergency services at the time.
Over the past four years there has been a complete overhaul of the way ACT emergency services operate. New emergencies legislation has been put in place; 11 new firefighting appliances have been purchased; 170 additional full-time and volunteer firefighters have been recruited; new communications and weather monitoring systems have been put in place; and new community education and public awareness strategies have been introduced. A strategic bushfire management plan has been put in place and fuel reduction activity has been massively stepped up. Funding for our emergency services has grown by more than 40 per cent since 2003 and now totals more than $60 million a year.
These are the actions of a government that has stood in this place, acknowledged to the Assembly and the people of Canberra deficiencies in historical practices and then put its heart and soul into remedying those deficiencies. With the handing down of the coroner’s report, we have another opportunity to look closely and thoughtfully at our
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