Do this in the interests of political research. Google the international company, Sheridan Sheets. Then go to Our Story and click on the 1970s segment.

And there to this day you will read: "The decade began with Mrs Andrew Peacock perched decorously on a chair, endorsing Sheridan's newly introduced printed sheets."

Yes, 40 years on, the British company is still dining out on the day that an Australian Cabinet minister offered to resign because his wife had done a television advertisement endorsing their bed sheets.

The issue was trivial; the idea of resigning ridiculous. In fact the Prime Minister of the day, John Gorton, told Peacock not be "a bloody fool."

But it was one of the most memorable stories of the Gorton period.

Likewise the colour TV affair. In 1982, Michael MacKellar, a Fraser Government Minister, brought a colour TV into the country, but listed it on the customs form as black and white, therefore avoiding duty. He was sacked, along with the Minister for Customs, John Moore, who handled the issue clumsily.

And ditto the Paddington Bear affair. In 1984, when Customs officials searched a suitcase belonging to the wife of Hawke Government Cabinet Minister, Mick Young, they found a Paddington bear. Then, I'm sure to their absolute horror, they discovered that the minister hadn't declared it, therefore dodging who knows how much in duty.

Young had to resign until he was judicially cleared.

The point is that anybody who has followed politics since the 70s can instantly recall these episodes.

But who can recall the names of the 11 ministers who either resigned or were sacked during the Howard years, and the nature of their indiscretions?

Analysts constantly bring up the occasions when ministers were sacked for relatively minor offences in the days when, apparently in some sort of misty eyed way, ministerial standards meant something. They seem to think that these occurrences should be the precedents for now and into the future.

But many of those resignations and sackings were over the top, an overreaction to blanket media coverage at a time when political parties were still trying to come to terms with the relatively new and powerful television medium. The sackings were wrong then and they would be wrong today, if similar circumstances existed.

The point is, all allegations of ministerial impropriety ought to be taken individually on their merits.

There never has been an unambiguous prescription for these things.

In broad terms, ministers are individually responsible to the Parliament for actions taken under their authority, and that includes people in their department and various related agencies and statutory authorities.

But even if responsibility is then established, there is no clause or precedent or convention that says the penalty must be resignation.

That again depends on the individual circumstances.

John Howard saw a political opportunity when he campaigned for office in 1996. He promised and eventually delivered a new code of conduct for ministers that led to the loss of five ministers in his first term.

The casualties included National Party minister, John Sharp, who was destined to lead his party, but instead walked away from politics altogether.

Another casualty was one of Howard's senior advisers - and one of his closest friends, Grahame Morris - who said years later: "The code was written by public servants and Mother Teresa couldn't have lived with it."

One of Howard's senior ministers, Senator Nick Minchin, told Paul Kelly in an interview for his book, The March of Patriots:"There was a feeling that Howard's manic commitment to the code was putting nearly everybody at risk for the most mundane transgressions. The code produced some shocking events."

The code was eventually abandoned to the point where the latter Howard years are now dragged up as an illustration of how ministerial responsibility barely exists at all anymore.

The fact is that if a minister was held responsible - and had to resign - every time somebody under his charge screwed up - then there would be no ministers.

Putting the schizophrenic Howard reactions to one side, prime ministers usually get it right. The political imperative usually works. Common sense has to apply. There can be no inflexible prescription.

And surely common sense demands that before Peter Garrett is sacked, there should be coronial inquiries to determine why four people died, and who was responsible?