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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 1935 ..

ACT emergency services, including assets and personnel, be contained and managed within a new authority.

The McLeod report recommended, among other things, that the Emergency Management Act 1999 should be reviewed with the aim of preparing legislation that provides for different levels of special powers and the capacity for escalation measures to be invoked to assist in the management of emergencies and that the Bushfire Act 1936 should be reviewed and redesigned to reflect contemporary needs and the ACT Bushfire Council’s role should be re-expressed in the act to more accurately describe its current activity.

It also recommended that a fire abatement zone should be defined between the north-west and western perimeter of Canberra and the Murrumbidgee River and the foothills of the Brindabella range and that the abatement zone should be declared a bushfire-prone area and the requirements of the Building Code of Australia—in particular, its standards for bushfire-prone areas—should be applied to all future developments in the zone.

The McLeod report also stated:

…the Emergency Management Act, Bushfire Act, Fire Brigade Act and Fire Brigade (Administration) Act would all need to be changed. This should present an opportunity to review all the relevant provisions. Placing those that have continuing validity into a single…act would seem to be a desirable outcome to work towards.

A considerable amount of work has been required, in consultation with numerous stakeholders, to develop an appropriate model for an Emergency Services Authority, one which will unite the four services under one management umbrella and which will allow efficient and flexible management of operations in the field.

The level of consultation undertaken on this project has been extraordinary. Commissioner Peter Dunn has conducted many meetings and workshops over the past six months with emergency services agencies and volunteers, the Bushfire Council, relevant unions, the Volunteer Brigades Association, the Rural Lessees Association, community councils, rural-urban interface community groups, and members of this Assembly.

In addition to that, there has been considerable effort made to keep agencies advised and to receive their views on the project. An internal working group, consisting of representatives of all stakeholder agencies, has been meeting fortnightly to discuss progression of the legislation, the development of the authority and a range of key implementation issues. The results of that most comprehensive consultation are to be seen in this bill and what I would think will be its ready acceptance in this chamber.

There has been very strong general support during the consultation process for the establishment of the new authority and for the procedural reforms included in the bill. A number of issues have been raised and resolved between the various representatives within and outside government. Consequently, this bill represents an accurate reflection of the balance of views about how the authority should be established and emergency management undertaken.

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