The minister responsible for the ACT's public libraries says the ongoing suggestion cuts to weekend hours was bloody-mindedness in action was "blowing my brain" and she would have taken another option if there was one.
Tara Cheyne was censured on Wednesday but defended her handling of library hours cuts and seatbelt offence fines that were found to be incorrectly authorised in a censure motion debate brought on by the opposition on Wednesday.
"If I thought there was another option, surely, surely I would have done it. I would not have set myself up for this if there was any other way. But there wasn't," Ms Cheyne said of the library changes.
Ms Cheyne also committed to prioritising weekend library access at the Kippax and Erindale branches from the middle of next year, restoring access after cuts the minister had previously said were unavoidable and had been designed to prioritise staff wellbeing.
"It needs to remain open to government as to what that looks like. That goes to the heart of all of this. This is about operational realities. But we can commit to prioritising weekend branch access at Kippax and Erindale from July 2027," Ms Cheyne said.
The Liberals, Greens and independent MLA Fiona Carrick on Wednesday voted to censure Ms Cheyne.
Opposition Leader Mark Parton moved the censure motion - one step below a no-confidence motion that, if passed, prompts a minister to resign - and said Ms Cheyne had failed on two fronts.
"Labor governs this territory in a minority parliament and we understand that that's sometimes not easy," Mr Parton said.
"But it also means that if the government or a government minister does things or fails to do things that the non-government members feel is unacceptable, that we have the power to send a strong message to that minister, to the government and indeed a strong message to the residents of this city that we strongly disapprove in what you've done and disapprove we do."
Mr Parton said Ms Cheyne's failure to follow through on keeping libraries open after an Assembly motion passed earlier in the year was "in absolute contempt of the parliament".
Ms Cheyne said the way the government had responded to the motion, including tabling a "lengthy and comprehensive" response on Tuesday, could not be regarded as contempt.
"I am responsible for nine libraries, the people who run them, and for a service the whole city should be able to rely on. And ... at the start of this term, they could not," she said.
"And sure, I did not take it to the election, because the head of the problem did not arrive really until the first quarter of last year. And when it did, I did something about it. In fact, the Assembly asked me to. And I did.
"And then, when 37 recommendations came through, I agreed to do every single one of them. And it included looking at opening hours, viability and roster. If reliability could have been achieved just by hiring more staff, I would have done it."
Ms Cheyne also said the issue with seatbelt offence fines was an error that the government had owned and repaired, and she did not accept that candour was misconduct.
"This motion asks the Assembly to censure me for two things. A decision I candidly explained before the Assembly voted, including what I could not do. And an administrative error that was found, stopped and corrected," she said.
"Accountability just cannot mean pretending that administration never fails. I also note the point about holding senior public servants to account. Senior public servants have stepped up on both of these issues time and time again. They have fronted up. I have fronted up. There's no hiding."
The Liberals' censure motion was amended in a complex debate that included the Greens moving to strip references to the seatbelt offence problem, first revealed by The Canberra Times, and independent MLA Thomas Emerson seeking to admonish Ms Cheyne rather than censure her.
The Greens, Liberals and Ms Carrick voted against Mr Emerson's move to downgrade the censure vote.
"I completely disagree with what the ACT government's doing to our libraries. But if we lower the threshold and start using censure motions for every disagreement, they risk becoming meaningless," Mr Emerson told The Canberra Times.
Ms Carrick said she supported the censure motion because Ms Cheyne had not provided more information to justify a decision to co-locate the Access Canberra shopfront in Woden Library.
Independent MLA Leanne Castley, a former leader of the Canberra Liberals, attacked her old party for moving the censure motion.
"It is another sitting week and another censure motion. It comes as a surprise to exactly no one, because we already know that the opposition clearly intends to censure, smear and whinge their way to the 2028 election," Ms Castley said in the debate.
"This obviously will not be the last censure motion. Whenever any minister does anything mildly controversial, which we can probably assume will be any measure to address what the Liberals call the fiscal emergency, we can probably expect they will find themselves the subject of another Liberal censure motion, regardless of whether it stacks up."
