Page 3410 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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It being after 6.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the motion for the adjournment of the Assembly was put.
Adjournment
State Emergency Service volunteers
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (6.03): I am very pleased to rise in the adjournment debate this evening to acknowledge and congratulate the Belconnen SES volunteer unit on their excellent result at the recent national championships of Australian state emergency services. Today is Wear Orange to Work Day as part of National SES Week and I am very pleased to be making my contribution today to acknowledge the work of our SES volunteers.
In May this year the ACT State Emergency Service held its own local competitions to determine the best SES unit in the ACT. Volunteers from the Belconnen SES were judged the best overall team and were chosen as the ACT’s representatives to attend the National Disaster Rescue Competition which was held in Bunbury, Western Australia on 3 and 4 November this year.
For only the fourth time in the history of the competition each state and territory had a team competing. Teams comprised six members as well as a team manager. Throughout the competition they are judged on their rescue and technical skills, first aid, navigation, teamwork and team leadership. Teams are required to complete a series of activities over the two days of the competition, with points from each stand aggregated to the team in the final placings. When the final positions were announced, the ACT State Emergency Service team was ranked sixth overall—a great result given that the ACT has the smallest SES of any jurisdiction.
It was particularly pleasing, too, that the team leader of the ACT team, Mrs Fiona Levings, was ranked the second-best performing team leader throughout the competition—a great result for her—and my congratulations go to her on achieving this level of recognition for her skills.
This really does highlight the very high quality of our volunteer services. The fact that the ACT can hold its own in a national competition against services that have tens of thousands or thousands of members compared to the several hundred we have here in the ACT SES is great credit to the ACT SES, to all of our volunteers and in particular to the volunteers of the Belconnen SES unit and their team leader. My congratulations to them all.
Ms K Gallagher—performance
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.05): Mr Speaker, I think it is a little unfortunate that throughout the day’s debates and discussions there has been this undertone coming from the government where the colleagues of the Deputy Chief Minister, and the Deputy Chief Minister herself, have been out playing the woman card all day. There has been a range of allegations that the opposition is picking on Ms Gallagher because she has been off having a baby. There has been talk about maternity leave.
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