Page 296 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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planning evacuations and warning systems under, for example, TAMS or an occupier of the land would be entirely impractical and potentially dangerous, with the potential for conflicting arrangements to be imposed.
Mr Pratt’s final proposed amendment is for guidelines for vulnerable areas. The strategic bushfire management plan already identifies areas that are vulnerable to the effects of bushfires, as well as providing the mechanism for undertaking appropriate mitigation for new hazards that may arise. This section of Mr Pratt’s proposal would result in a large number of commissioner’s guidelines that would only duplicate what is already identified through the strategic bushfire management plan and bushfire operational plans—more duplication, red tape and bureaucracy from Mr Pratt.
This bill, in short, is an unnecessary piece of legislation. If passed, it would lead to the duplication of responsibility, it would lead to an enormous increase in the number of documents and plans having to be prepared, it would lead to a simplistic approach to asset protection zones, or bushfire breaks as Mr Pratt wrongly refers to them, and it would lead to an inappropriate level of risk analysis, instead adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. More importantly, it would also lead to an entirely impractical and potentially dangerous arrangement for emergency warning and evacuation.
Most of the issues that Mr Pratt raises in his bill are the types of issues that are already dealt with in management plans or operational plans. Legislation is not the place for these matters to be raised. Given the changing nature of the bushfire risk that we face, the matters raised need to be in place in documents that are flexible and changeable according to the considered assessment of risk, not set in stone in legislation as Mr Pratt proposes. For the Assembly to accept Mr Pratt’s bill and amend the Emergencies Act would be to the great detriment to the community. The government will not be supporting this legislation.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (3.50): I do appreciate the work that Mr Pratt has been doing to try to ensure that the ACT, including its residents, is prepared for bushfires, and I do agree that we need to be prepared and do everything that we can. However, I do not agree with all the ways he proposes to do so. I am not sure that Mr Pratt’s proposed amendments add much to what is already outlined in the current Emergencies Act, or that they add much to the strategic bushfire management plan for the ACT, version 1 of January 2005, which is already a fairly comprehensive document.
Before I go into detail about Mr Pratt’s bill, I would like to take a few minutes to point out to members a few odd things about this strategic bushfire management plan, henceforth SBMP. The plan was prepared by the then ACT Emergency Services Authority in collaboration and consultation with the community, rural lessees and land management agencies, and was to reflect the recommendations of the McLeod report.
When it was prepared, it was only to be version 1. Version 2 was to be the plan that would last 10 years. I was surprised to find that version 1 apparently is now, suddenly, called the final version on the ESA website. How did this happen? How did version 1, which was only ever supposed to be a temporary version for six months, suddenly
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