Page 1767 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007

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of a failure by this government and its departments to be open and accountable. You move to cover your backside. God help us if we want to ever even admit that there has been a failure.

The opposition would have a lot more respect for this government if they said, “Listen, opposition; we have found weaknesses in the system that we need to address. You have alerted us to those particular issues as well, as have the community, and we are willing to move on those.” There would be a lot less argy-bargy in this place—and in estimates, in hearings and in annual report hearings—if this was the attitude of this government. It is not. It is a matter of “Do not dare admit that there might be a weakness in the system; do not be open and accountable. We want to be arrogant; we want to be on top. The opposition has no role to play.”

It is this culture which backgrounded this government’s failure with the 2003 fires—the failure by this government to accept early responsibility for a range of issues which had gone wrong in the events leading up to the January 2003 bushfire disaster. The government would have been forgiven for its failures except for its arrogant stubbornness, a stubbornness that meant that the opportunity to move quickly to provide better protections to the community passed us by.

I refer also to a particular high school incident. Mr Barr and I have crossed swords about this on many occasions. It is an issue that I raised in 2006 in the estimates hearings. I am not going to go to the detail of that matter now, but the fact that very serious issues—very strong allegations, and I stress “allegations”—were swept beneath the carpet is another clear illustration of this government’s arrogance and its failure to be open.

I go to the ESA restructure. Because the ESA—the emergency services authority, an independent authority—were expressing concern to the government that new initiatives needed to be taken quickly, their independence was taken away. Because the government’s bureaucrats were jealous of the independent authority’s independence in an operational sense, we saw the government move to close the ESA down.

I go to FireLink. What a project management disaster. Mr Hargreaves—as he walks out of this chamber—is one of two ex-ministers and one current minister who share the glory in covering up on the failures of the project management of FireLink, the mobile data and vehicle locating system which is still not operational. We now have no mobile data and vehicle locating system. That was a project that they said would be operational by bushfire season 2004-05.

I go to safety issues around the bus interchanges. This minister said that he would be moving in May—that he was alarmed. He was rightly alarmed. He was being pressured by the TWU—that something needed to be done. He said that they would move by July to at least take immediate steps pending longer-term budgetary initiatives to make the bus interchanges safer. As we stand here today, in August 2007, those bus interchanges are not that much safer at all. We are yet to be convinced by this minister that he has moved with the urgency that he boasted about in May.


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