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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2900 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

following up with them just because they have asked for a copy of the McLeod report: that is the level at which the recovery process is working.

I listened to the news broadcast this morning. I happen to have the transcripts of the 7 am and the 7.45 am news when Mr Smyth spoke. If you listened to what Mr Smyth said, you would be forgiven for believing that Mr Smyth or the opposition had told this government that it should have a full community program of education, which they did not.

Mrs Dunne: Mind you, the Emergency Services Bureau said that we should.

Mrs Burke: You are not listening, Ted.

MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Quinlan has the floor.

MR QUINLAN: I will in a moment read the full motion that Mr Pratt brought to this place. I found it necessary, in the last Assembly, to invent a term called "I have been Gary-ed", because we had a chief minister who verballed members in this place. I am trying to conjure a term that describes tangential reference to something but implying a different conclusion. The best I can think of is a "Brendan bender", because there seems to be a certain amount of bending between what happened and the claims that are made in the public forum.

The opposition, and Mr Pratt, particularly, as the spokesman for-

Mr Pratt: You say that with such feeling.

MR QUINLAN: Don't you worry about that. That will be the extreme.

Mr Pratt: You lovable creature.

MR QUINLAN: You do frighten me, Mr Pratt, but not in the way you think. You are frightening; you are scary.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Quinlan, direct your comments through the chair and the members of the opposition will desist.

MR QUINLAN: Certainly, Mr Speaker. Let me point out that this resolution, this warning, came in the words that the ACT should:

(1) decry the loss of property and the extensive loss of natural bushland and pine forest in summer 2001-2002; and

(2) notes that but for the excellent work undertaken by the ACT Rural Fire Services and Emergency Services greater devastation would have occurred;

(3) notes that the majority of the fires were caused by human intervention and in many cases deliberately lit-an issue this community must confront in order to minimise dangers to the community;

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