Page 1626 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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Cigarette Sales
MR STEFANIAK: My question is to the Minister for Health. I wonder whether the Minister has seen media reports about a takeaway food store in Fisher that stopped selling cigarettes. Does the Minister support that development?
MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Mr Stefaniak. The answer is yes, I have seen the reports. As to whether I support that development, I think it is laudable that some retailers are thinking about the health interests of their clients. I understand that the proprietors of the Fisher takeaway store, Gil and Colleen Miller, have taken a unilateral decision to stop selling cigarettes from their store and, in fact, rather than suffering a business downturn as a result of that decision, they have had an overwhelmingly positive response from the people of Fisher and elsewhere who use their store.
I am not suggesting that the Government should encourage people to stop selling cigarettes as a way of reducing the impact of tobacco related disease on the community; but I do think there is a very strong case for saying that people are entitled to review the circumstances of their own handling of those products, as retailers and as wholesalers even, and I think it is very laudable that people in the community are thinking about those issues at that level and producing that kind of result in those community contexts.
Health Management
MR CONNOLLY: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, given that the Government's response to the maladministration in the health portfolio has been to place the blame on and achieve the resignation of a senior public servant, and recalling Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's famous responses during the Fitzgerald inquiry, what do you, as Chief Minister, understand by the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in a Westminster system?
MR KAINE: As usual, Mr Speaker, the questions from the other side of the house are simply not predicated on fact. At no time has the Government placed the responsibility on Mr Bissett and, in fact, if you have been reading the media and listening to what the responsible Minister has said, he has constantly alluded to the contribution that Mr Bissett has made to the management of the health system. So, your question, as usual, is based on a wrong premise.
As to the question of ministerial responsibility, I am sure that you have read the Enfield report assiduously, trying to find something to hang on the Minister for Health; but you will have a hard time succeeding, because if you hang something on the present Minister for Health you hang it equally on the previous Minister for Health who is just as culpable, if there is any culpability at ministerial level
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