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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2156 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

which have developed going back a helluva long time, all of which have contributed to the January 2003 disaster.

Certainly such an inquiry under the Inquiries Act would have provided full protection and privilege to all individuals and all corporate groups who needed to come forward and make those submissions, and that would have allowed Mr McLeod to have a lot more information to draw upon to make the very necessary recommendations.

Again, Mr Speaker, I do point out that we have got only a few months before the next bushfire season; there's little time now to start applying the lessons that can be learnt to allow the Emergency Services Bureau and our other agencies to put in place the sort of emergency management planning required and needed to minimise risk. We can never legislate bushfire risk out of existence, but we must do everything possible to minimise the risk.

I am glad that the government has now come forward at least with this proposal. We support the bill in principle. I certainly support Ms Tucker's amendments. I think Ms Tucker's amendments will provide further teeth to make it a more viable bill. So let's see where we go from here. Again I encourage the government to see whether we can move quickly to put in place the new mechanisms required to make this ACT community a safer place next time around.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Detail stage

Clauses 1 to 3, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Proposed new clause 3A.

MS TUCKER

(4.30): I move the revised amendment circulated in my name [see schedule 3 at page 2162].

Basically the intention of this amendment I'm moving is to remove subsection 4 (2) of the principal act because it refers to procedures in the Assembly as a trigger for protection. My primary amendment provides protection without recourse to this strategy. If we don't delete 4 (2) it could conceivably get a bit murky, with the same thing being done in two different ways.

Proposed new clause agreed to.

Clause 4.

MS TUCKER

(4.31): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 3 at page 2162].

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