Page 3842 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 30 November 2021
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for the season. I can advise that the BOP was done, but I will have to come back with the detail of the actual number in percentage terms.
MS LEE: Minister, which areas of the ACT have been targeted for prescribed burns this year?
MR GENTLEMAN: We manage 187,000 hectares for the ACT and the six foreshore. In relation to the activities most indicated, of the 2021 BOP, we have completed 94.4 per cent of the actions identified in the BOP. That is prescribed burns but also, as I mentioned, the other actions that take place. Activities for prescribed burning, physical activity and access management most impacted—about 90, 84 and 79 per cent of completion respectively.
MR MILLIGAN: Minister, with the wetter season, and the inability for prescribed burns, will there be a catch-up period, and when will that commence?
MR GENTLEMAN: Yes, there is work that occurs right throughout the year for the ACT in ensuring that we can manage those fuel loads into the future. It is usually reliant on the weather at the time. If it is quite wet, it is difficult to do the burns; if it is windy and dangerous, it is difficult to do the burns as well. We leave that operational control within ESA and the Rural Fire Service, to manage those windows of opportunity.
Building—combustible cladding
MRS JONES: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Sustainable Building and Construction: in estimates you confirmed that the ACT government believes 90 buildings in private hands in the ACT are potentially affected by combustible cladding? Are you satisfied that the informal kerbside identification conducted by ACT Fire & Rescue in 2019 is an adequate assessment of the scope of the combustible cladding issue in the ACT?
MS VASSAROTTI: I thank the member for the question. In response to the cladding issue that was identified, as early as 2017 the government formed an interagency building cladding reform group to determine whether or not combustible materials had been used in buildings and the ways in which those materials were posing a risk. As part of that, in December 2019 a cladding audit response team was established to look at both government buildings and also to get a sense of what was happening in relation to private buildings.
As part of that the response team undertook desktop analysis of certainly privately owned buildings, and that included a kerbside identification of buildings with cladding material that was carried out by ACT Fire & Rescue in the most likely suburbs—around town centres, transit corridors and areas where there is apartment development. The outcome of that assessment and identification was around 90 apartment buildings of three storeys or higher—
Mrs Jones: On a point of order on relevance, Madam Speaker, while the information is very interesting, my question was about whether the minister was satisfied with that methodology she is now describing in detail.
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