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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2656 ..
MR PRATT
(continuing):Ms Tucker
: Not like education or health.MR PRATT
: I think I hear Ms Tucker's mother calling, but we won't worry about that. The emergency management plan for the ACT is not just another run-of-the-mill administrative instrument. It is a critical instrument. In other words, our emergency services and our emergency plan do not have the luxury of time when matters need to be reviewed. That is why I and the opposition thought it most necessary to question the minister about the state of our services against the lessons of January 2003. And the minister failed to respond to what can only be described as a reasonable and genuinely motivated scrutiny.I find this state of affairs entirely unacceptable. The community has no idea of whether the government is managing its emergency services properly and whether the budget is now wisely and efficiently positioned to deliver the ACT community a refurbished emergency services and a re-evaluated emergency management plan. The community has had an opportunity missed. There was an opportunity at estimates in June to at least review some part of the ACT's position approaching the next fire season.
Mr Speaker, I believe that ministers do not have the right to dictate to an estimates committee what questions can or cannot be asked. It is not for ministers to determine what line of questioning estimates should follow. Mr Wood has repeated here tonight that the details of what happened around the 18 January 2003 set of circumstances should not be questioned in estimates as, he says, such issues have no place in estimates.
I believe the circumstances of 18 January 2003 have much to do with testing territorial expenditure and the way in which territorial resources are managed. The fitness of the territory's resources and the territory's capability to cope with an emergency are assessable in estimates in June of 2003, not when some other phase of inquiry may or may not have finished on time.
Sure, the estimates process is not structured to assess, in scope terms, the fitness of the Emergency Services Bureau and its attendant agencies to cope with emergencies as well as McLeod can. But three points can be made about this. Firstly, estimates was another mechanism of assessing capability and therefore did play a valuable supplementary role while we wait to see the outcome of the other inquiries. Secondly, estimates was happening much more quickly than McLeod or the coronial inquest and therefore could have determined much earlier certain courses of action on some equipment and some capability matters. Thirdly, estimates was a line of inquiry which, frankly, I think was going to be far more independent than is the case with the McLeod inquiry. There was every reason for estimates to follow this line of inquiry; there was every reason for the minister to answer the questions on that line of inquiry.
Mr Speaker, I will finish by saying that I believe the people of the ACT have been dudded in respect of knowing what sort of emergency capability they are getting for their money-$160 million in 2003-04 and the three out years. Were they dudded by a stonewalling government? Did Minister Wood treat the committee, and through it the people, with contempt? I believe that these matters, along with possible breaches by Mr Corbell, need to be examined by the proposed select committee.
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