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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2786 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

accept the recommendation, but I think what it should do is consult first to see whether or not there is a better way to use the Bush Fire Council. Is there a path forward down the evolution of delivering emergency services in the ACT that would better include people's experiences? A constant complaint I am getting from the community, particularly the volunteer community, is that they do not feel that they are being used to the best advantage or in the way that they could be.

The point of the McLeod report was that we could be ready for the coming season, yet I note that the government has now established 1 July 2004 as the date of commencement for the new authority with its supporting legislation. I admit it is a difficult task to draft legislation to set up a new authority, but one of the things the opposition will show tomorrow, contrary to the claim that we are free of policy, is that it is possible to do it quickly and do it well.

Therefore, I would question the government's commitment here, because what they have done is said, "We will employ a person to set up something. We do not know what the something is, but we are going to set it up anyway."That, to me, is illogical because, should the ultimate organisation evolve to the extent that we do not have the super emergency service that Mr McLeod has recommended, the set of skills that the person in charge of the new authority or authorities may need will be significantly different. We have the cart before the horse, and I am not sure we are actually in the right race to start with.

The other issue that comes up is recommendation 12, "Responsibility for fire access should lie with land managers: advice and auditing functions should be the province of the fire authorities."Mr Speaker, the responsibility for fire access is already with the land managers, and what we are saying is that we are going to leave it as it is. Again, maybe we need to question whether that is the right way to do it, and maybe we should give the new fire authority the power necessary to actually put in access trails and to overrule some of the land managers.

What you are doing is giving conflicting responsibility to people who may have an environmental or a heritage bent, when in fact we may need, in some cases, to put fire management first. If you quickly, say, accept recommendation 12, that may be fraught with danger.

I note that recommendation 13 talks about aerial bombing. I think aerial bombing is a fine thing, and views over the last 10 years in this country have changed significantly. Ten years ago there were very few advocates of aerial bombing but I think we all now know the images of the Ericsson sky cranes dropping their great loads in the 1994-95 season in Sydney, and certainly over Canberra in the 10 days of January this year.

However, the government's response seems to be that we are going to rely solely on helicopters, when I suspect there is very good case to be put forward for not just helicopters, but fixed-wing aircraft. There are local operators who are willing to operate. They have been excluded from the equation. I would like to know on the basis of what critical evaluation the government has made the decision to simply go with helicopters, when fixed wings are operating currently in the northern hemisphere in the fires in France, Portugal and Spain. They are operating very effectively in

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