Page 81 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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to fight the fire and what information to make public was remote from the Chief Minister.
In the days that the fires burned before reaching Canberra, the Chief Minister was not the responsible minister; nor did he have any responsibility for taking operational decisions in the various firefighting activities that occurred and nor did he play any role in deciding what information to release to the public. It is true that he was the Attorney-General and, at that time, the Emergency Services Bureau reported to the head of the Department of Justice and Community Safety. But that does not, of itself, make him the responsible minister. Ministerial responsibility is set out in the Administrative Arrangements Orders; it is not determined by bureaucratic reporting lines.
The coroner made much of having an expert witness on ministerial responsibility giving evidence before her. Sir Peter Lawler was not called as an expert witness. He was called as a householder who had suffered grievous loss in the fires and was able to explain how that occurred in his case. His evidence about ministerial responsibility was fortuitous. How much reliance can be placed on Sir Peter’s summation of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility? His grounding in this area was obtained under the tutelage of Sir Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, Sir John Gorton and Sir William McMahon, long before the present era of Prime Minister John Howard and his present day version of ministerial responsibility.
Howard sacked six ministers in his first term for various misdemeanours, but has clung to Phil Ruddock despite his handling of the immigration portfolio and the Hicks matter. Amanda Vanstone was not dismissed for mismanagement of immigration or wrongly deporting Australians. The Prime Minister squibbed it and simply did not include her in his reshuffled ministry. He did not say, “Amanda, things have gone wrong on your watch and you must go.” He changed his view of ministerial responsibility and preferred to avoid calling his minister to account for things that went badly wrong under her direct control. Yet the local Liberals want to show their toughness and vote the Chief Minister out for matters that were beyond his control. How can we take this seriously?
When Ms Carnell was Chief Minister, she faced a no-confidence motion based on the degree of her complicity in breaking the law in relation to expenditure on Bruce Stadium. She faced a second no-confidence motion based on the degree of her complicity in the decision making that led to the hospital implosion being made a public spectacle, with tragic results. The current no-confidence motion against Mr Stanhope involves no breach of the law and no suggestion that he was in any way involved in the decision making about how to fight the bushfires.
Why are we having this debate? It is solely to give the present Leader of the Opposition something to distract the voters with; something that he can use as a smokescreen to obscure his own problems with his party. It is pure politics unrelated to the Chief Minister’s performance then or now. The Leader of the Opposition thinks he can use this matter as a vote winner, but it is interesting to note that the Liberal Prime Minister’s henchman, Senator Bill Heffernan, does not agree with him. When the coroner released her report, Senator Heffernan said on ABC radio that
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