Page 94 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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was to provide cabinet with an assessment not only of what was occurring—to bring them up to date—but of the range of possibilities beyond that, including the possibility of a serious impact on the ACT suburban area.
You were told, but you did not have the courage, the wherewithal or the strength to do anything with it. Instead, you hung on to the slim hope that it would happen on Monday so that you could have a weekend off. How do we know this? We are talking about stat decs. Mr Quinlan said of the meeting that he left the meeting thinking, yes, we have a problem. Hansard of 3 March 2003 quotes him as saying:
The briefing alerted us to the fact that we could have a problem. Members might remember that during the 2001 bushfires some spotting occurred in suburban areas. We thought that the 2003 bushfires might involve some spotting, or that they might be a bit worse than the 2001 bushfires.
What did he do? He went to Melbourne. In Hansard he is quoted as saying:
I recall being told at that briefing that the Monday would be a 40-year weather event.
He recalled thinking:
… I, as minister, should be there.
So he made arrangements for a return flight to Canberra so that he could be there on Monday. He said:
Because of subsequent events I specifically remember the tenor of the briefing that I received. At the briefing I was told that there was some concern about the bushfires.
He then said that he was “aware that the following week would be pretty tough”. That is the problem: the government all thought it was going to happen the following week. It was not meant to happen on Sunday. Didn’t they tell the fire that they are a nine-to-five government? That is the problem.
That leads to two questions: Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister, where were you when all this was happening, and what were you thinking? What led you to go AWOL for 15 hours so that you could not be contacted from late in the afternoon on Friday, 17 January 2003 when you were the only minister? You were the Chief Minister, the most senior minister, and you had all the junior minister roles as well. You had the lot and you were missing. What would have happened if that call you missed at 7.10 on the Friday night from the head of emergency services had been to request that a state of emergency be declared? On page 57 of the report it says:
There is also reference to Cabinet being recalled if necessary to make a quick decision on priorities about assets to save—
so they were actually divvying it up: “You win, you lose. We’ll save you, you’ll go”—
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