Page 60 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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Make no mistake: the attempt by Jon Stanhope to shut down the inquest led to community sentiment turning against the government. Before this, Canberrans had been prepared to give Mr Stanhope the benefit of the doubt. When he tried to shut the inquest down, they smelled a rat. They said, “What does he have to hide?”
Chief Minister, here is a snapshot of just what the community thought of you and your efforts to shut down the inquiry. Mr B Cooper of Flynn, in a letter to The Canberra Times, said:
Reading that the bushfire inquiry has been put on hold … I feel totally disgusted. To see elected representatives … ducking and weaving to avoid blame makes one realise that this has become the standard operational procedure. Where was the buck supposed to stop, Mr Stanhope?
Mr Peter Clack wrote in the City News:
To seek to squash the free and open inquiry by attacking the character of the coroner, and her expert officials and expert witnesses, does no credit to the public officials the solicitors are representing. And the timing, just days from the ACT elections, suggests an underlying motive of preventing any more public revelations as voters go to the polls.
Mr Speaker, these comments sum up some of the broader feeling in the community. This government went after the messenger. It went after Coroner Doogan and tried to make her the issue. Instead of the issues being why we were not warned and how we could try to learn the lessons from the mistakes of 2003, this government set out to attack Coroner Doogan, to undermine her credibility, so that, at the end of it all, they could say, “Well, really, she was just biased. Really, she just had it in for us. This does not stack up. Really, believe us; don’t believe her.”
The government still has not put forward a motive for why this coroner would be biased in the way that it claims. As counsel said during the action, the action was launched whilst conspicuously failing to identify any sort of agenda which might sway the coroner from an even-handed approach. Why would the coroner not have been even-handed, Mr Speaker? That question has never been answered. It has never been answered by this government.
It is clear why this action was undertaken by the Chief Minister. It was undertaken to avoid responsibility, to delay and frustrate the inquiry. It was taken in the hope of getting a coroner who would not be as thorough. The action made a lie of the Chief Minister’s acceptance of responsibility. There was a betrayal of those waiting for justice. It was a disgraceful attack on a respected member of the judiciary.
After all of this, the question still remains: why were we not warned? Why was the community not warned? The first and most important duty of any government, and any head of government, is the safety and security of the community which they lead. The coroner, after exhaustive investigation of the matter, found that Jon Stanhope failed in his most basic duty. When the pressure was on, when it mattered most, he failed.
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