Page 301 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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An important outcome of the recommendations from Coroner Doogan is contained in recommendation 21 that version 2 of the strategic bushfire management plan be completed and introduced without delay. We have version 2 because version 1 was inadequate. Version 1 was the draft version and, as Dr Foskey so rightly pointed out, it mysteriously in the not too distant past actually became version 1 complete. I do not recall any fanfare or any announcement that it had been adopted and had moved from draft to final. Again, this shows the haphazard approach that this government has to emergency management, and that is why Mr Pratt has taken the government to task today.
Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the fundamental feature of emergency management planning is to plan for the worst. You have to plan for the worst. You have to assume the worst and hope for the best. Mr Corbell in his speech took the global view that “you just take this sort of overall risk management view.” Well, the risks in Chisholm are entirely different to the risks for the people who live up in Appel Street backing on Farrer Ridge. And the people in Fadden Hills have an entirely different risk to the people of Richardson. So you cannot have “one view fits all”, as the minister would suggest. What Mr Pratt says in his bill is that we need to have plans that fit what might go wrong in those areas. Yes, it is a daunting task. Mr Corbell called it a “glut of paperwork”. Well, if the government had perhaps done its job properly between the December 2001 fire and the January 2003 fire, and maybe if they had had a glut of paperwork, they might have better understood what we were facing. And that is the problem with emergency management—you do not know how big it is going to be until there is an emergency. But you have to prepare for all eventualities, hope for the least eventful outcome and cope with whatever comes your way.
So given the considerable concern of the coroner who found that the appropriate version of the strategic bushfire management plan had not been introduced as scheduled, it is instructive to remind ourselves what findings of fact were made by the coroner on this matter. She found that version 1 of the strategic bushfire management plan had been introduced on 1 January 2005 to apply till 1 July 2005. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I remind members that that was 20 months ago. At that point version 2 of the plan was to be introduced. In fact, we should have had version 2 20 months ago.
At the time of her report being written in December, her understanding was—and she is correct—that version 2 had still not been introduced. That is around 18 months after the due date. I think not updating, or attempting to update, version 1 can be characterised as negligent. Nobody is fooled by it just being renamed. What we find is the lackadaisical and haphazard attitude of this government to emergency management in the ACT.
Mr Pratt’s bill seeks to do a number of important things. Firstly, it provides authority to ACT government agencies to carry out appropriate planning and the authority to direct land managers, landowners, both public and private, to carry out identified hazard reduction planning, maintenance of trails and other activities. It seeks to give them authority to do that—authority which we believe they do not have under the current act. The bill also seeks to establish clearly the sequence of actions that would be carried out by the commissioner and his senior officers, brigades and units, land
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