Liberal Leader Mark Parton brought a motion to the Assembly to censure the Attorney-General and Minister for City and Government Services, Tara Cheyne, for the ACT Government’s failure to properly authorise cameras to enable seatbelt infringements and its decision to proceed with the closure of several libraries on weekends and evenings despite strong community and Assembly opposition.

The Greens moved an amendment that removed references to the seatbelt infringements issue. Labor also moved amendments to provide further context regarding the Government’s future commitments regarding libraries’ opening hours. These amendments passed unopposed.

Thomas moved an amendment to the motion seeking to change the censure motion into a ‘Resolution of Admonishment’ by replacing the word ‘censures’ with ‘admonishes’. In his remarks, Thomas reflected that while he disagrees with what the Government has done to library opening hours, he felt that if the Assembly started to censure every Minister for policy disagreements, those censure motions risked becoming meaningless. Thomas also cited censure motions that he had previously supported, including the censure of Minister Steel for the bungled rollout of MyWay+ and the censure of the former Deputy Chief Minister for failures in the housing, sports, and education portfolios. In this case, Thomas argued that Minister Cheyne’s actions did not meet this serious threshold, as they did not involve ministerial incompetence or insufficient oversight, but should be admonished for being out of line with community expectations.

Thomas’ amendment was supported by Labor and independent MLA Leanne Castley, but were voted down by the Greens, the Liberals and independent MLA Fiona Carrick.

Fiona Carrick then introduced further amendments criticising the Government for failing to assess the impact on services and amenities from the relocation of Access Canberra into the Woden Library. These amendments passed with the support of Thomas, the Greens and the Liberals, despite being opposed by Labor and Leanne Castley. 

The final motion, as amended, was opposed by Thomas, Labor and Leanne Castley, but passed with the support of the Liberals, the Greens and Fiona Carrick. Thomas ultimately voted against the censure as he did not believe it met the threshold for a censure motion, after his attempt to downgrade the motion to an admonishment had been unsuccessful.