The ACT's Attorney-General, Tara Cheyne, has been found to have breached the code of conduct for parliamentarians over an anonymous text message she sent criticising former Canberra Liberals leader Elizabeth Lee. The legislative assembly's standards commissioner, Ken Crispin, made the ruling after investigating a complaint from Ms Lee about Ms Cheyne's conduct.
Ms Cheyne sent a text message to ABC Radio Canberra's Breakfast program in September that accused Ms Lee of being absent from the ACT Legislative Assembly. The text said: 'My own observation is Elizabeth was absent from the assembly for half of the year.' The author of the text only wanted to be referred to as 'a Labor MLA'. Ms Lee took a period of leave earlier this year, granted with the support of other members, on the advice of medical professionals.
In the assembly, Ms Lee described the text message as the 'lowest of blows' and said that Ms Cheyne's actions 'undermines the integrity of the entire assembly'. Ms Lee said she felt she had no choice but to publicly defend her decision to take leave, which she said Ms Cheyne had used as a 'political scoring point'. 'To make a disparaging comment about my personal leave that I took earlier this year … was hurtful, damaging and frankly dangerous,' Ms Lee said.
Mr Crispin found that Ms Cheyne had breached the rules requiring members to act with integrity, honesty and diligence, and to be fair in political dealings. In his report, he said Ms Cheyne had maintained her reference to Ms Lee's absence was nothing more than stating what she believed was a fact. However, he noted that 'a breach of privacy is not excusable merely because the relevant statement is true' and that Ms Cheyne's statement left members of the public to assume Ms Lee had been guilty of an unwarranted dereliction of her duty.
Ms Cheyne said writing the text message was an 'impulsive decision' and that she chose to send it because she was not confident an interview would be confined to the issues she wanted to raise. Mr Crispin said when read in isolation, Ms Cheyne's explanation 'would seem to involve some degree of defensive rationalisation' but added that 'Ms Cheyne did not attempt to defend it'. An assembly committee recommended Ms Cheyne apologise to the assembly, which she did, saying: 'I sincerely and unconditionally apologise to the assembly.' Ms Cheyne had already apologised to Ms Lee in an earlier letter, in which she said 'it was a foolish and rash action to take'.
