Page 90 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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This is simply wrong. It is completely nonsensical to believe that the Chief Minister would not have warned the Canberra citizens of the potential of the firestorm had he been aware of such information. Unfortunately, a selective quotation has been employed here, which has not given the Chief Minister a fair representation.
We have heard today, as we did on 18 January 2003, from Chief Minister Stanhope that when he declared a state of emergency he left us in no doubt of the severity of the situation. In the radio interview on 2CC the Chief Minister said that “it acknowledges the seriousness of the emergency that we are facing and it allows all of our emergency authorities and in particular the police to take action if they need to, to take a whole range of emergency steps. It gives them emergency powers. It puts the Chief Police Officer John Murray as notionally head of, or in control of the emergency”. Clearly, these comments by Jon Stanhope demonstrate that when he became informed of the severity of the firestorm he wanted to inform all Canberrans and take the necessary steps to deal with the emergency.
Further, today the opposition has raised the issue of the Westminster convention of individual ministerial responsibility and has called for the resignation of the Chief Minister. At the time of the conflagration on 18 January 2003, Jon Stanhope was the Acting Minister for Emergency Services. However, neither the Chief Minister nor other ministers had the relevant operational experience, expertise or, indeed, the responsibility to make judgments to decide whether warnings should be given or the content or timing of any warnings. The Chief Minister followed the advice of the Emergency Services Bureau at all times.
Today the opposition has quoted from the coroner’s report in relation to the convention of ministerial responsibility. However, the coroner quotes from only one source in relation to this contentious and much debated convention and that is senior public servant Sir Peter Lawler. Sir Peter stated that there had been a convention that if things go seriously wrong in their departments ministers may feel compelled to resign. Sir Peter’s comments about ministerial responsibility are misleading of the convention. It is now a commonly held belief that individual ministerial responsibility does not require resignation as a result of problems that occur at a departmental level that the minister is not informed of.
What is required is that the minister must explain these departmental mishaps in parliament. A minister is expected to resign if he or she has done something grossly unethical. For example, if a minister is involved in financial impropriety, conflict of interest or misleading parliament, a resignation may be legitimated. However, this was not the case with Chief Minister Stanhope.
Today in the chamber we have heard many interpretations of what exactly is meant by individual ministerial responsibility and that resignation is mandatory for mishaps which occur under a minister’s area of responsibility. In fact, as one knows, resignation at both state and federal level is rare. As I have stated, resignation is only required for unethical, corrupt, personal conduct. This was not the case with Jon Stanhope in 2003.
In fact, resignation is generally only necessary for collective ministerial responsibility; that is, if a minister cannot publicly support a cabinet decision or the general direction
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