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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2942 ..

MRS BURKE (continuing):

This matter is about the truth. We should stand for truth, justice and equity. This is about people having closure and answers. I know that the Chief Minister wants that. All his ministers do, I am sure. Sometimes we have to take things on the chin, we have to take the hard punches that come with such responsibility. As I said, it is about the truth; it is about people having closure and answers.

The people I talk to, some of the community that I mix with, certainly have not got that yet. They are away from it; they are moving towards it. The government has implemented some things, and I applaud and acknowledge them for that. The government might like to avoid some of the hard issues, but the community deserves the truth.

This government continually says it is not about a blame game. Why, then, do they keep leading the charge on this matter? Why does the Chief Minister continually keep naming-he names them; we of the opposition never have-the very people he purports to protect? It is extraordinary; I am just lost for words on that one.

It seems now that the shift is fairly and squarely on the community. I find that very hard, given that I speak to lots of people in the badly affected communities. When you sit and look at their faces as you talk to them, you see the anguish, the unresolved issues that they are still going through. Let's face it: they see us as the government, whether we are in opposition or in government at the time; the 17 members here are held accountable and responsible and when one speaks we all speak.

This government continually says that it is not about the name game. The shift has been fairly and squarely onto the community, which, under extraordinary pressure, has coped amazingly to date. Why does the government seek to tell them now that they have been complacent? Why now? Indeed, I truly hope that the government now realises, if they have fully digested their own report, that the Canberra community had not been sufficiently well prepared to understand the nature of the bushfire risk that was present as a consequence of the siting of the city in a bushland setting, as referred to on page 173 of the McLeod report.

How can the Canberra community be wrongly blamed and accused by the Chief Minister of being complacent when they were unaware? Yesterday in this place, he seemed very proud almost to announce that he was complacent, and promptly included all of the community in that bag. McLeod himself explicitly says on page 172 that the first step is to increase awareness of the nature of the risk faced. Being unaware or uninformed is not complacency.

I am disappointed and sad that a community which has been through so much and which, for some, is still living the horror of that day is now the fall guy for a government that was, in fact, complacent itself. A very positive point was made by McLeod on page 174 when he said:

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