Page 1841 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007

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This is the problem. Either the Assembly has been misled or the Assembly is owed apologies. And, most importantly, Mr Stanhope needs two ministers to comply with the code of conduct. If those ministers have been duped or misled, they should come down and correct any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Mr Speaker, that was at 10.30 yesterday.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you are clearly attempting to impute that somebody has misled the Assembly. You are not permitted to do that without moving a substantial motion. Withdraw those comments, please.

MR SMYTH: I withdraw at your direction, Mr Speaker. This whole litany of the FireLink saga is indicative of the financial management of this government. It is curious that when things go right it is because of their good management, but when things go wrong it is always somebody else. It is interesting to hear Mr Corbell say that statutory officers must take responsibility. What about the minister?

DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (12.21): I am talking to Mr Corbell’s amendment. I will also speak to the substantive motion. It is quite difficult to tell if Mr Pratt wanted FireLink to work or what he thinks is a better system. That is my problem with his motion. I am not really sure what he is getting at except condemning Mr Corbell and his predecessors for being involved in the procurement and being the ministers while FireLink failed to succeed—and it cost so much money. I would be interested in hearing Mr Pratt outline what he sees as an alternative; that does seem to be a very basic problem that emergency services is contending with.

I also want to say that apart from the error of fact that Mr Corbell pointed to—that the fire season actually starts on 1 October—it is not true to say, as 1 (f) does, that there are no other mobile data communications and automatic vehicle location systems in place. Whether they are adequate or not is another matter and is not for me to determine.

The difference between Mr Pratt’s motion and Mr Corbell’s motion is that Mr Pratt’s motion calls for some kind of action, which Mr Corbell’s does not. Mr Corbell’s motion merely puts an alternative view on the state of events; it does not say, for instance, that he is going to assure the Assembly that there is something in place that we can feel secure about.

It may be that Mr Pratt’s time line is a bit unreasonable—to call for the government to report by 5 pm on 30 August. It may be unreasonable. Of course, one would like to believe that the government knows which mobile data communications systems will be in place. We have already noted that there are a couple that are in place, but we would like to hear about the coverage that those are capable of.

Mr Pratt and Mr Smyth have made some points about there having been perhaps a lack of attention to this issue, to put it kindly. Mr Smyth put it in quite different terms in his quotes from transcripts, questions asked and so on—that the ministers have not had their ears to the ground on what exactly was happening with this exciting venture, which the installation of FireLink was in the beginning: a great thing. It was a great move forward. It also gave work to a cutting-edge Canberra company, I believe.


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