Page 2987 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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in this debate. I want the record to show that I treat the intention of Mr Pratt quite seriously. We disagree entirely with what he is putting forward, but that in a sense—
MR SPEAKER: You are supposed to be speaking to the Foskey amendment.
MR HARGREAVES: I am speaking to that amendment, Mr Speaker. The reasons that I have just advanced about the way we are approaching Mr Pratt’s motion are exactly the same as the reasons I am using in my approach to the amendment from Dr Foskey. Firstly, we were speaking in the substantive motion and in my amendment about the global approach of strategic bushfire management planning and about the global provision of mitigation of services. Dr Foskey seeks to drill down and merely force the government to make decisions regarding the restructure of the territory’s municipal services department almost on the run, according to the timing determined by the Greens.
The government rejects that entirely. The restructure of the Department of the Territory and Municipal Services is a very, very complex and difficult exercise and will be done in consultation with affected stakeholders, with the staff themselves and with the best application of the consultation process and minds that we can bring to the process. We will not be pressured by amendments like this to speed the process up.
This amendment is predicated on the premise that the parks brigade’s capacity will be impaired, reduced or cut. I find no writings, utterances by ministers or pontifications by anybody to suggest that the parks brigade’s capacity to conduct operational planning and fight fires this coming season is in fact so impaired. Let me assure the Assembly that the parks brigade will be fully resourced at the start of this bushfire season.
The underlying premise in Dr Foskey’s amendment is not true. It says that the effects of cuts on the staff of the former Environment ACT and Parks and Conservation will do X, Y and Z. The assumption is that any changes or any adjustments to staffing will have an effect of reducing services. Such is not the case.
The reorganisation, the restructure or adjustment within territory and municipal services—with people coming into it, with their particular expertise and their particular imperatives; and people leaving and going somewhere else, with their particular imperatives and their particular processes—means that, in certain areas, in fact, the services will be heightened and enhanced. Other services will not. The whole premise that Dr Foskey bases her amendment on here, we totally and completely reject.
Mr Speaker, I can tell you that, in fact, the budget for bushfire operation plans for the territory and municipal services department has been quarantined from budget adjustments. Why is that? The reason for that is very, very simple. We take our responsibilities for bushfire mitigation particularly seriously.
The notion that Mr Smyth puts up about having the bushfire operational plan stage 2 put on the table really quickly, when everybody knows it is going to happen between now and 2010, is ludicrous. I shall treat his comments with the contempt that they are due. As I say, and I say it for the last time, I hope that we can proceed through to the closure of this debate very soon. We are not going to support Dr Foskey’s amendment, even if she is not in the room. Again!
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