Page 57 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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suburbs around me? That is what I think about when I hear claims such as those made by those opposite. How is it conceivable that I as a father would have done that? If I had known, surely I would have said, “Well, I need to get my family out of harm’s way.” But I did not. I had no more knowledge of what was going to occur that afternoon, Saturday the 18th, than anyone else in my neighbourhood—than anyone else in my neighbourhood.
That is what particularly disturbs me about the conspiracy theory built up by those opposite and others in the community—this suggestion, without any evidence, and there still is no evidence, that the cabinet knew and did nothing. There is nothing to back that claim. You would have to go against every element of human nature to believe that somebody having the knowledge that some people claim I, Mr Stanhope and others had would deliberately decide to stay at home. I stood on the roof of my house and saw houses burn. They were less than 100 metres away from my property. I saw them burn; I heard the flames; I smelt the smoke; I lost the power. My family ran away too.
So do not come into this place and say that I had some knowledge and that I put my family in that situation, let alone that I deliberately withheld such information from the rest of the ACT community. It is an outrageous claim. I am disappointed that I was not given the opportunity to give this evidence to the coroner. If this was such a significant matter for the coroner, why did she not ask the minister responsible? Why did she not ask the other ministers who were present at the cabinet meeting? The claim does not stack up. It is untrue. For those reasons alone, there is no reason for the Chief Minister to resign.
In the time I have remaining, I want to turn to the issues around the government’s response and the lessons that have been learnt since 2003. The lessons were significant, but they have significantly been learnt. There is more work to be done, but much has already been achieved.
Since 2003, we have spent over $100 million in community recovery and emergency preparedness. Since 2003, we have completely revamped the legislative framework. We have developed new plans to manage chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attack. We have done pandemic planning and evacuation planning as well as bushfire planning. We have purchased a whole series of new vehicles for our emergency services, including for the fire brigade, the Rural Fire Service and the ambulance service. We have put in place new communication systems that enable us to talk to the services in New South Wales and others that may come here at the time of emergency.
We have provided more support to rural lessees to manage their properties against fire, including the provision of firefighting equipment that is kept on rural lessees’ properties but owned by the Rural Fire Service. We have put in place more firefighters, both paid and volunteer. And we have put in place the community fire units program, with 28 units across the suburbs and over 750 registered volunteer members fully trained to protect areas on the urban edge.
We participate in the national aerial firefighting agreement, which gives us the resources for medium and heavy helicopter resources to assist with firefighting. We
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