ACT Opposition Leader, Jon Stanhope, is quite right when he says that the Coroner’s report into the hospital implosion is a matter of major public importance deserving wide debate in the ACT Legislative Assembly. However, he has chosen a poor vehicle with which to drive that debate. By all means, he should raise the question as a matter of public importance in the Assembly and raise aspects of it in question time. But by choosing the mechanism of a no-confidence motion in Chief Minister Kate Carnell he runs the danger of crying wolf and of causing delays of consideration of other important matters for the ACT community.
The trouble with a no-confidence motion is that it requires seven days notice and the suspension of all Assembly business in that seven days. So as a result of yesterday’s notice by Mr Stanhope of a no-confidence motion the Assembly’s scheduled sittings for the rest of the week are now lost. The reason for the suspension of Assembly business when a no-confidence motion is called is presumably because the matter is one of such gravity that all other matters should be held in abeyance because the Chief Minister could be seen as almost in caretaker mode until the no-confidence motion is dealt with. That principle would be fine if no-confidence motions were only put when there was a serious prospect of them getting up. However no-confidence motions have now become almost dime a dozen. Indeed, as independent MLA Dave Rugendyke points out, this is the third no-confidence instigated by Mr Stanhope within six months.
It may be that some changes to the ground rules should be made for the improvement of ACT governance. Perhaps the seven-day suspension of sittings should be abolished or even the whole seven day notice period for no-confidence motions should be abolished. It might also be beneficial to make it mandatory that any no-confidence motion in the Chief Minister also name the new Chief Minister, should the motion be successful. That might concentrate minds on the fact that no-confidence motions are really calls for changes in government and not excuses to make points of political grandstanding or vehicles for discussion of matters of public importance that can be dealt with in other ways.
That said, Chief Minister Kate Carnell is by no means out of the woods on the question of the implosion or Bruce Stadium. The Coroner may well have formally have exonerated her personally, but it is still open to a majority of MLAs to decide to force her to pay a full political price for whatever blame they wish to lay at her feet.
Given the seriousness of these two questions there is a fair degree of merit in the stand taken by Mr Rugendyke and fellow independent Paul Osborne. These two MLAs want more time to digest the Coroner’s report and also wish to see the Auditor-General’s Report into the Bruce Stadium before voting on any no-confidence motion. Given the length of time it took the Coroner to make his report and the length of the report itself it seems reasonable that MLAs should not rush to political judgement. It would have been better for Canberrans if both the Coroner and the Auditor were more speedy in coming to their conclusions. Both these matters have been hanging over the community’s head for too long. Mr Stanhope’s impatience is understandable but not justified.