Minister for Irresponsibility
Edition 1SUN 16 FEB 1997, Page 129 Minister for Irresponsibility By RICHARD FARMER THERE was a time when ministers of the Crown took [responsibility] for the way government administers things, but that was all long ago when people even believed that the House of Representatives was an important component in running the country. Nowadays, when the relevance of the Lower House has been reduced to determining once every three years which party becomes the government, ministers are prepared to take the credit when things go right but not the criticism when something goes wrong. The very institutional framework has been changed to try to make the people believe that is how things should be. The cover for the new system of ministerial care but no ministerial responsibility is the notion of statutory offices where legislation gives an unelected person a power to make decisions in a supposedly independent fashion. There have long been a few such positions in Australian government where...