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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2908 ..

MRS CROSS (continuing):

In the aftermath of the 18 January fires, the Chief Minister came out saying to the people of the ACT that, if anyone wanted to blame someone over the disaster, they should blame him. In other words, he openly took the responsibility upon himself. I was actually inspired by that. In saying what he did, he acted like a leader. And because he acted like a leader, he received considerable support and praise for his position, and he basked in that praise for some time, and deservedly so.

However, as time passed, the Chief Minister steadily changed his position. He has spread the responsibility around a bit. His position now is that the government is ultimately responsible. Acknowledgment of responsibility has now become more diffused. We have come from the early bold demonstration of leadership responsibility down to a victim-like bleating about whether people desire that he engage in a vigorous bout of self-flagellation and hair shirt wearing-his words.

Mind you, he still does acknowledge that, yes the criticism is justified, we accept it; however, the whining mode continued when he added the comment: "Now what more do people want than that?"This offensive mode is not very becoming for a leader.

In the McLeod report, there are a couple of points that are of serious concern. The first relates to what Mr McLeod describes as deficiencies in the provision of information and advice to the community. His judgment was that the provision of such information was "seriously inadequate".

With regard to this, we have seen comments from the Chief Minister along the lines that the community was afflicted by a "culture of complacency"and that, even when it was faced with media reports about the fires, alarm bells did not ring for many people. In making this comment, the Chief Minister said that, "We all went about our business...perhaps comforted with the attitudes and views and statements being made by the ESB."

As for the attitude of the ESB, Mr McLeod says that it seemed to have been "one of dogged optimism". What that comment translates as, in blunt language, is that the relevant authority or authorities were doing their planning against a likely best case scenario, instead of what any decent planner would be doing and that is planning against a worst case scenario. I therefore consider any comment about community complacency to be reprehensible. It is a little bit like saying that somehow the community brought the bushfires on itself.

Instead, I see the responsibility for complacency resting squarely with the responsible authorities who were, according to the report, doggedly optimistic. I also see complacency resting with the leader of the ACT community, the Chief Minister, who, as the leader, should have been actively and personally on the backs of the relevant authorities, pressing them and putting scenarios to them.

The community is painted as having been complacent. So that is that, is it? If they were as complacent as the Chief Minister says they were, why was that? It was simply because they were not kept in the picture about the true state of things. The ESB has said it did not want to panic people. That comment is just so weak. The people are not infants, they are Australians and Australians do not have a reputation as panickers: quite the contrary, they are stoic doers. I am sure they would not have panicked.

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