Page 3991 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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interesting points. The one that jumped out at me was that the minister should be asked to resign, should be sacked and removed from the ministry because some people threw rocks at ACTION buses. The minister is to be asked to resign because a rock was thrown at an ACTION bus. The minister is asked to accept personal responsibility for the throwing of a rock at a bus.
Under Westminster principles, as interpreted by the Liberal Party, the minister should resign. According to the Liberal Party, these are the stated reasons why the Westminster convention of ministerial responsibility should be brought into play. Somebody threw a rock at a bus and the minister was not there to prevent it. As a result, the Liberal Party believes that the Westminster convention of ministerial responsibility demands that the minister resign. Let us just expand on the notion that if a minister is not there when a bus is hurtling down a highway to prevent the throwing of a rock at the bus the minister should resign. I do not think you would have a single minister standing anywhere in Australia if that was your standard of ministerial responsibility—that a criminal act by a person or persons unknown was not prevented by the minister of the day.
What an incredible proposition! Let us explore the seriousness of this motion. The Liberal Party of the ACT believe, we hear, that a minister who tells a bad joke at a public event should be sacked and that a minister who is not there to prevent the throwing of a rock at a bus needs to accept the ultimate sanction dictated by the Westminster convention in relation to ministerial responsibility and resign his portfolio because he did not prevent the throwing of a rock at a bus. That is the intellectual basis for this motion of no confidence in this minister by the Liberal Party.
Let us look at the motion. It refers to security at bus interchanges. We heard earlier today about security on public transport. After seven years of Liberal government there was not a single security camera on a single bus. Security, of course, is enhanced by a whole range of methods. The most significant security initiative pursued in relation to public transport in Canberra was the funding by the minister responsible for transport, John Hargreaves, of a security camera on every single bus. We have come from a base of no buses with security cameras under the Liberal Party to a security camera on every single bus under John Hargreaves.
We are looking at ministerial responsibility. What are we to make, then, of the security on buses that we inherited from the Liberal government? Who was the last transport minister under the last Liberal government, Mr Stefaniak? Actually, I think it might have been Mr Smyth. Brendan Smyth stands today and condemns this minister for transport for a lack of attention to security in public transport. Mr Smyth now acknowledges that when he was minister he did not place a single security camera on a bus or do anything to enhance security on public transport in the ACT. That was his standard as minister. Now, of course, he applies a different standard to a minister who has provided for a security camera for every single bus. There is the standard.
The Brendan Smyth standard involved not a single contribution to safety within ACTION—on ACTION buses or at interchanges. Brendan Smyth acknowledges that when he was minister he did nothing about security for the public transport, not a single thing. He sits there and smiles about it. He says, “When I was minister, I got
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