Page 3147 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 August 2005

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arrangements by ESA officers, for example, during fire safety inspections or following response to an automatic fire alarm.

The next stage is the implementation of incident action plans, a very significant part of the ACT evacuation strategy. The key requirement for standard evacuation plans is the capacity to incorporate the specific arrangements of a certain location into incident action plans at the time of an incident.

Another feature is access to community evacuation centres through the IAP, which will locate and communicate the locations of specific staging areas and community evacuation centres to which the community will be directed. The use of staging areas can be necessary in higher population density areas to gather people for transportation to other locations away from the incident area. Potential locations for evacuation centres are known and include schools, colleges and community centres. The last of the particular aspects of the strategy is the operational analysis of evacuations, an essential action intended to maintain best practice within the ACT.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasise the value of the approach taken by the ACT government and point out the limitations of published plans. The ACT evacuation strategy provides a flexible and adaptable approach to the management of evacuation in the ACT. It maximises the advantage of space and easy road access in the ACT and avoids the limitations of set published plans that have been developed elsewhere.

The major limitations may be: the deliberate targeting of evacuation routes by terrorists with the use of secondary devices; certainly, complacency in the mind of the community; and an inability to develop incident action plans that meet the unique demands of a particular incident.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired.

Childcare centres—rent

DR FOSKEY: My question is to the Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services. It relates to the management of community facilities. The ACT government leases facilities for the purposes of providing childcare to a diversity of operators, including small businesses and non-government organisations. In a ministerial statement to the Assembly in December 2004, the minister said that the development of consistent approaches to the management of community facilities, including those used for childcare, would be an area of major government focus. Therefore, can you please explain why some childcare operators leasing premises from the ACT government pay peppercorn rent while others pay full commercial rent? What responsibility does the ACT government have, in making them available, to ensure that the premises are safe to use and undertake ongoing maintenance?

MR HARGREAVES: With respect to the levels of rent that various people pay, I would have to look at specific cases, as all of those occurred before my time, and I do not have that information in my head. If Dr Foskey would like to provide details, and perhaps some comparisons, that show me where one centre is paying peppercorn rent and another is not, I would be happy to look into it and find out the reasons behind it. The government is quite keen to see community activities that support various activities


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