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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 583 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

To highlight the value of additional information, I was at the briefing Mr Wood spoke about that was organised by one of the residents of Chauvel Circuit. She invited her neighbours, and one of them said to me, "Brendan it's on, do you want to come?"So I went along. The units from rivers brigade attended; I think there were some parks units there. They explained the procedure of what might happen should a fire occur; what response could be made and the sorts of things residents could do to attempt to fireproof their house or land; and how to escape if the fire became uncontrollable. I will check with the lady but I am sure she said that she believed that the briefing actually led to the saving of a life because they knew what to do when the house exploded and everything was on fire.

So the value of this sort of briefing to one street is clearly evidenced by the fact that people were able to use the information on the day. I think it was intended to follow up and have more and more neighbourhood briefing so that people could become very comfortable with what was required and what might happen in their locale, so that they would be able to cope better and so as to make sure that what happened may not have happened.

This one small incident illustrates the point that this briefing was possibly responsible for saving one single life. But what could we have done if we had more of these sorts of briefings across the board in the suburbs that were endangered?

I do not think it is fair to to limit this discussion, as the Minister, Ms Gallagher did, to just schools. It is a much broader issue. There are two issues in the motion: one is about the suburbs that fringe the bushland and the other is about education in all our schools. Yes, you are right in one sense-we should wait for the outcome. But the coroner's results probably will not be known for two years. The McLeod inquiry will report at the end of June, but we will have lost several months to reinforce this message in our schools. Although we would acknowledge that the pressure on teachers is great and curriculums really are quite full, Canberra is the bush capital and the only thing that is certain is that parts of Canberra will burn again.

I have been to fires on and off for 10 years at the same block of land in Monash, at same hill in Oxley, and at the same lump of pines on the Monaro Highway. The reality is that, because of their very nature, these sites burn regularly. What we need to do is educate particularly young people as to the impact of lighting fires. Also, we can certainly help adults, parents and older people in the community to be well able and well equipped to cope with what goes on in their area.

There is a large amount of educational material out there. I do not believe there is any need to reinvent the wheel. The CFA has some excellent material, and so have some of the other fire services, and it would not be hard to make this information more widely available.

We raised this issue before Christmas because we thought, based on the predictions, that it was going to be a bad season. Nobody had any idea how bad the season would end up. We now have an opportunity to begin to be a little bit more proactive, and I think with that in mind it is quite appropriate that we should implement immediately the matters contained in the motion.

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