Page 606 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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The consequences for Mr Berry's political career are profound. My expectations if the no-confidence motion is carried are that action must occur. However, I believe that, wherever the benefit of the doubt exists in our consideration of this motion of no confidence in the Minister, that benefit of the doubt must go to the Minister at this time. The case that the Opposition has mounted against Minister Berry must be proven and must be seen to be satisfactorily proven to this Assembly today.
I would like to outline my own process of consideration of the issues in relation to the no-confidence motion. I have done it in fairly recent times but done it, I think, in a fair amount of detail. Firstly, I think it would be helpful if I clarified my position in relation to this no-confidence motion and also in relation to the inquiry that I feel I helped bring about. I have said previously and publicly that I believe that the establishment of the inquiry is important in ascertaining the facts of the process in relation to the VITAB-ACTTAB contract and that the inquiry may or may not have a bearing on the Assembly's assessment of the Minister's performance in relation to it. However, the inquiry and assessing whether the Minister for Sport has misled the Assembly can still be seen as two separate issues if the latter can be determined on the evidence as it exists.
The Opposition have publicly indicated on numerous occasions, and especially since about the middle of March, that a motion of no confidence in the Minister would be moved in the Assembly at the earliest opportunity. The Minister himself has also indicated that he does not want a no-confidence motion hanging around, so to speak. Quite rightly, therefore, Madam Speaker, this motion of no confidence in the Minister is being debated in the Assembly today, and it is up to each of us, on the information we have available, to form our own conclusions as to whether the Minister has misled the Assembly.
I have also been very conscious of the gravity of the motion that is proposed. I have been back to House of Representatives Practice, which has been referred to by several members in this chamber today, particularly to assess the Minister's responsibility for the ACTTAB-VITAB contract. We have heard in the Assembly that the Minister has taken on himself the responsibility of the ACTTAB-VITAB contract, and certainly he has indicated that Cabinet had no particular involvement in the process. So I read with interest some of the statements in House of Representatives Practice, second edition, about individual ministerial responsibility, and I quote from page 87:
It is through ministers that the whole of the administration - departments, statutory bodies and agencies of one kind and another - is responsible to the Parliament and thus, ultimately, to the people. Ministerial responsibility to the Parliament is a matter of constitutional convention rather than law. It is not tied to any authoritative text, or amenable to judicial interpretation or resolution. Because of its conventional character, the principles and values on which it rests may undergo change, and their very status as conventions be placed in doubt. In recent times the vitality of some of the traditional conceptions of ministerial responsibility has been called into question, and there is little evidence that a minister's responsibility is now seen as requiring him to bear the blame for all the faults and shortcomings of his public service subordinates, regardless of his own involvement, or to tender his resignation in every case where fault is found. The evidence
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