Page 40 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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processes to see whether there might be yet further changes we can put in place to ensure that the events of 2003 are never repeated.
It is not unusual, when confronted with calamity, to want to apportion blame. We all feel that urge on occasion. It is natural too for those in positions of some power or authority at calamitous moments to look inward and to ask themselves if they did all within their power to avert disaster or pick up the pieces afterwards. In the four years since the 2003 fires, I have had plenty of time to ask those questions of myself. It is true that I have regrets. I regret in particular the year-long delay in the resolution of this matter caused by the challenge to the coroner. Yet again, hindsight lends an extra dimension and a new complexion to events.
Still, I am not ashamed that I supported then, as I support now, individual men and women who I felt did an extraordinary job in extraordinary times with the resources, the knowledge, the skills and the expertise at their disposal. That these resources and this knowledge were found wanting on 18 January 2003 surely says more about 18 January 2003 than it says about those men and women.
I thank the people of Canberra for the support they have shown this government over the past four years. I thank my colleagues for the support they have given me personally today, indeed every day over the past four years, as we have worked together to heal the community and to ensure, as far as ordinary men and women can ensure, that the events of 18 January 2003 never recur.
MR SPEAKER: Before I call Dr Foskey, members will recall that Mrs Burke was granted an indulgence to remain seated while speaking. Until Mrs Burke advises me that she is sufficiently recovered, I propose to continue to allow her to speak when she is seated.
Mrs Burke: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.57): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to speak without limitation, and I thank the manager of government business for granting me this concession.
Leave granted.
DR FOSKEY: I have an abiding fear of uncontained fire. This is because I have experienced it in various guises, beginning when I was about six, minding my brothers while watching the vacant town block next door burn, coming within a cat’s whisker of our side fence. This fear was reinforced a few years later, inspecting the ruins of a neighbour’s house which burned to the ground when she left the iron on, beginning for me a lifetime’s worry about leaving my iron on. But these were isolated experiences such as occasionally occur within a country town or a suburb and not of the wildfire variety. These fires never left their quarter-acre blocks.
It was later, when I moved to the mountains of far east Gippsland, that I learned to dread the combination of drought and dry thunderstorms. Even so, my first bushfire experience in my first year there was, like 75 per cent of such events, man made, as the adjoining neighbour’s attempt to reduce his blackberry problem got away
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