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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1660 ..

Mr S MR PRATT (continuing):

peaker, in December 2001 we had quite a horrendous fire which really was a wake-up call for the ACT. The fire of 24 December burnt very quickly. It was a severe fire that was burning, of course, in drought conditions. In emergency risk management terms, the conditions were quite atrocious.

The fire was brought to heel pretty quickly, but there were lessons to be learned out of that. A risk analysis of the ACT's position in the light of those fires and through 2002 would have indicated that we were looking at difficult times ahead, not to mention the fact that the lessons from those fires needed to be applied to the way the ACT organises itself for bushfire emergencies.

This was no time for the ACT not to mobilise all the possible resources available to it in its preparation for fire season 2002-2003. I say that again: in the wake of the 2001 fires, and given the conditions that the ACT faced, this was no time not to mobilise all the possible resources available.

One of the resources available for the taking was the federal funding made possible under the Commonwealth fire services payments to the ACT fire services program. This is funding provided by the federal government as their contribution to the ACT fire services in recognition of the mutually agreed obligation by the ACT fire services to protect federal property in the ACT.

Of course, this is not just a program designed to simply protect the federal Parliament House and other assets located in the parliamentary triangle, which, of course, would need to be protected by urban fire units. Both urban and rural fire brigade units, as elements of the Emergency Services Bureau, are expected to protect those federal assets located on the urban bush fringe of the ACT-for example the AFP property in Weston and Australian Defence Force facilities located around Campbell, Fairbairn and on the suburban fringe of the ACT.

So it is very important to acquire this federal funding, which is routinely made available on a fee-for-service basis. It is an important asset. Mr Speaker, every single dollar counts, and those ACT fire units designated to provide the fee-for-service service, if I can put it that way, would have their capabilities significantly lifted by the acquisition of those funds.

For example, if the ACT were able to argue, as part of its negotiations, that half a dozen urban fire units had a role to play in directly protecting federal assets, they would receive a significant amount of dollars and this would add to their capabilities-capabilities, I might add, which would be available to be utilised in all forms of firefighting, including domestic and local suburban requirements. The spin-off is that that capability would be generally available to the whole community.

So why did this government drag the chain in obtaining that funding through 2002 and 2003? This government surely can't have been expecting that the federal authorities would simply send that funding down the hill to the ACT government. It wasn't just a matter of that happening.

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