Page 1870 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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The opposition has been very suspicious that either FireLink was not appropriate to meet the requirements of the badly needed mobile data system or that FireLink itself was not being properly managed. We have always been critical of the way that FireLink was managed. We were well and truly overrun with anecdotal information and feedback that this project was not going particularly well. That may not be FireLink’s fault. As I have said a number of times, FireLink has had very successful capability in other theatres; there is no question about that. FireLink is a good product that works for ATI in a number of other fields. But it should not have been taken on within our emergency services, and that is an issue that the opposition has always been terribly critical of.
What are ACT residents left with? How did we get to this point? Why did FireLink not meet the original project objectives—or did it meet the original project objectives but it was simply mismanaged? These questions may well be answered by the Auditor-General in her inquiry. However, if the Auditor-General’s inquiry is not scoped broadly enough to pick up these questions and answer them, that will be a matter for debate in this place.
What will the government do now to replace FireLink? Mr Corbell has said he will come back and answer that. I hope that Mr Corbell will not come back to this place and say that what was said by the commissioner, Mr Manson, during the Solly interview a day or two after the announcement that FireLink was going to be sacked—that emergency services might revert to the tried and tested system of using markers on whiteboards—will necessarily be the answer. We would hope that, after spending $4.5 million on a project which has been three years late in the making, the answer we get will not simply involve markers on a whiteboard when it comes to trying to track 125 RFS and SES vehicles in the field, not to mention those fire brigade assets that may well be fighting fires on the urban edge as well. We hope that this is not going to be the answer.
McLeod stressed that there were very strong indications that communications needed to be overhauled after the 2003 fire disaster. McLeod was very clear in saying that he was pleased to have seen that the ESB had at least commenced a communications program of some sort. McLeod said that resources needed to be provided to accelerate that rebuilding program. The government, to its credit, did that. The government’s budgetary strategies in 2003-04 identified $23.66 million to address a family of new communications programs. Unfortunately, they did not cater for recurring funding, operational funding, which is something that plagued the emergency services authority when it tried to implement those programs, but at least there was ample capital funding provided. Unfortunately, $4.5 million of that bag of gold has gone up in smoke. It has been wasted.
Our emergency services do not have a mobile data and vehicle locating system—one of the major planks of the new communications program which this government agreed in its cabinet objectives needed to be put in place by bushfire season 2004-05. What will be done for this bushfire season? (Time expired.)
Amendment agreed to.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
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