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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (30 January) . . Page.. 48 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

The rebuilding from approval to construction needs to be done swiftly and with the minimum of obstruction. I know from my own experience that if you let your momentum flag it drags you down. We have an excellent task force in place and I congratulate the government on the skills and talent that it has assembled in such short time. But my concern is that the task force is an advisory body and not an executive one. Almost three decades ago, the Whitlam government faced the urgency of rebuilding Darwin after Cyclone Tracy and I come here today to suggest that we have a model for what is needed in the ACT in the Darwin Reconstruction Authority, which was established by an act of parliament in 1975.

By all means, abide by the appropriate building codes and let us make them stronger, if necessary, but the mechanisms must minimise delay. They must fast-track approvals and other certifications. (Extension of time granted.) In short, we must have systems to ensure that material and tradespeople are available and in place and reconstruction is swift, orderly and cohesive. The Darwin Reconstruction Authority, for instance, established concessional loans to help people who were uninsured and underinsured. There might be a model there to assist those people from Canberra similarly affected. It also developed special assistance packages for businesses affected by the devastation.

Mr Speaker, the scale of what happened in Darwin and what happened in Canberra is not the same, but the model is there and it is a useful one to borrow. I note the words of Sandy Hollway on 2CN yesterday morning when he said that he was not about reinventing the wheel. The Liberal opposition suggests that rebuilding Canberra is a task for a dedicated government authority, not to go on forever but with a definite sunset clause in it. This authority needs to be invested with wide powers and staffed by appropriate people.

The thing that makes us suggest that is that we have a real concern about the capacity of organisations such as PALM which have their own preoccupations with transforming PALM into the new Planning Authority. They may not have sufficient resources within their own capacity to be saddled with a whole range of new and very pressing responsibilities.

Planning approvals in this place take time; often they take too much time. In this environment, we cannot afford that. We have to be bold and we have to be creative but, most of all, we have to be swift, sensitive and sure in seeking to overcome this sad and tragic hiatus in our community. It is a big challenge for this government to see whether they can carry on with the momentum that they have started.

From personal experience, I say to the people of Duffy, Holder, Chapman and all those other places which have been affected by the fires that they need to look after themselves. They need to be kind to themselves and they need to look to their children because, Mr Speaker, every one of the people affected and every one of the people who, as Ms Dundas said, have sat in their houses and wondered why their houses were not burnt will react in some way over time. We will see the behaviour of our children change. We will find them suddenly ill for no reason. This is where the services of the community-the school communities, in particular-are going to be most important because none of us and none of the people in those suburbs have been spared.

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