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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2910 ..

Mr Stefaniak: It was pretty close.

MR WOOD: Yes, close, Mr Stefaniak. Down the list it is-we do other business and we come down to this. It does not give much of an impression that you regard this as a very serious motion at all. It is just a routine part of private members business, so how seriously can you take it? Not very seriously at all.

However, it is not just the manner of moving the motion but the significant confusion in that motion. We have lumped two things together. There are a few items that probably need discussion and conclusion on their own, rather than being wrapped up in a censure motion. I find it strange that you mixed up the first part and the second part of this. Why would you do that? I can tell you why: because there is not much to go on anyway, so that is the best you can get out of it. You have really become confused.

Then look at the magnitude of this confusion. Point 1 of Mr Smyth's motion calls on the government not to implement the proposed emergency services authority until consultation has occurred and so on. But what has happened today? Mr Pratt has introduced a bill. He is taking action. He wants it done right now. How do you reconcile point 1 with what Mr Pratt was talking about an hour or so ago? You are just going to bring it in, like that-click your fingers and bring it straight in. That tells me, that tells this Assembly and that tells this community absolutely how confused you have become about these things in no time at all.

Opposition members interjecting-

MR SPEAKER: Members of the opposition, come to order, please.

MR WOOD: There is an absolute contradiction between point 1 and the bill that has been introduced, and that is the case with so much related to this topic.

Mr Pratt tried to make something of the 102 consolidated recommendations from the earlier bushfires. I do not know whether this is ignorance, distortion, rewriting history or what, but the first comment on this was from Mr Smyth, who said nothing had been done. Now, he probably did not know and that was a mistake on his part. When we gave him the data, he started to back down and he said, "You have not done the important things. You have not done this and that and something else."

The fact is that a process was carried out fully after those 2001 fires and most of those recommendations have been implemented. Mr Pratt subsequently tried to take it on and, in his confused way, argues as a major part of his speech that we had not reacted properly. We had reacted properly: ESB had reacted properly and was taking all the measures required.

For example, one of those recommendations, 94 or 95, about community information, referred to Canberra Connect, and Canberra Connect was brilliant in all this. Why? Because, following the recommendations from the 2001 fires which had been taken on, by some time in November they were fully geared up to respond to any event at all, including a bushfire. There it was, up and running. It was just one example of how

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