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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3603 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
Minister, or even a call for that to take place from the Opposition or the Independents, or anybody else for that matter.
Mr Stefaniak cited two examples in this chamber today of serious failings on the part of the Public Service, servants of the Government, servants of the community, which led to the deaths of people who were in the charge, if you like, of those public servants. There were two cases of deaths in custody at the Belconnen Remand Centre and a death at Quamby, and other cases have been referred to of people, for example, dying as a result of negligence in hospitals and so forth. There are a number of such cases. How do you distinguish those cases? How does Labor distinguish those cases?
No-one on the Labor side has attempted to do that today, except possibly for Mr Quinlan, and I will come to Mr Quinlan's test in a moment. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that on the broad test that you would state, the test that Ms Tucker stated a moment ago, it is impossible to distinguish between this case and those other cases, and I will quote that test. I am quoting from House of Representatives Practice:
The evidence tends to suggest rather that while ministers continue to be held accountable to Parliament in the sense of being obliged to answer to it when Parliament so demands, and to indicate corrective action if that is called for, they themselves are not held culpable - and in consequence bound to resign or suffer dismissal - unless the action which stands condemned was theirs, or taken on their direction, or was action with which they ought obviously to have been concerned.
Only two members have addressed that issue directly in this debate so far, Mr Speaker, and they were Mr Quinlan and Ms Tucker. This is the Quinlan doctrine: Ministers are responsible when a large number of public servants are involved in the omission or commission which led to the particularly unfortunate outcome. When a large number of public servants are involved the Minister is responsible. When a small number is involved the Minister is not responsible. It is a little bit imprecise. We do not actually know where the line is drawn, but at least there is some attempt at defining the test.
There is a problem though with this test, Mr Speaker, and that is that if you look at the other precedents in recent years you find, if you draw a line somewhere, it does not very much help the people who are trying to convict the Chief Minister on this occasion. For example, in the inquest into the death of Mr Camden in the Belconnen Remand Centre a total of 22 officers - that is, people who were public servants in one way or another, custodial officers, supervising staff in Corrective Services, medical practitioners, staff at Mental Health, and hospital staff and senior officials - in one way or another were targeted for some criticism in that report. The number of people in respect of this report today is closer to 14. So where is the Quinlan test? It does not go anywhere.
If we are going to pursue this test - that it depends on how many people were actually involved in committing the errors - then we would like to know where the line gets drawn. Suspiciously, I imagine it gets drawn just over the number of people involved in this particular matter, Mr Speaker.
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