Page 1075 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010

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The Security and Emergency Management Committee of cabinet, Security and Emergency Management Senior Officials Group and Security and Emergency Management Planning Group will continue to be advised and supported by the Security and Emergency Management Branch within the Department of Justice and Community Safety. The Security and Emergency Management Branch will maintain the whole-of-government incident notification framework for ministers and senior officials, and will transition to the territory crisis centre to support the Security and Emergency Management Committee of cabinet and Security and Emergency Management Senior Officials Group in the overall coordination of a major incident.

The territory controller will be replaced by an emergency controller with provisions for the appointment of that person in circumstances where it is not necessary to declare a state of emergency. Such appointments may arise in circumstances relating to a catastrophic fire danger rating; an animal health incident similar to the equine influenza outbreak; an emerging pandemic similar to the H1N1 outbreak; and where it is necessary to make provisions for recovery well in advance of the peak of an impending emergency.

The appointment framework for the emergency controller will also include a review of an appointment by the Chief Minister no later than 48 hours after the appointment is made, and the cessation of an appointment not later than seven days after an appointment is made or if a state of emergency is declared. The Chief Minister will retain the capacity to direct the emergency controller not to have a particular function or functions, or to have another stated function.

Increasingly, the approach to emergency management is one which deals with all kinds of emergencies using a common set of management arrangements. This all-hazards approach is formally included in the objects of the act and will apply to the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery—PPRR—framework for all emergencies in the ACT.

All ACT government departments and agencies have been fully consulted on the provisions contained in this bill and have agreed that clarity, consistency and intuitive simplicity in the structures providing advice and support to cabinet are central to the success of the government’s response to an emergency.

The bill I am introducing today is an important step in ensuring a more effective and efficient emergency management framework for the ACT. It allows for the government to remain in overall control of the response to, and recovery from, a major emergency through the appointment of an emergency controller to direct the operations of such an emergency; and through the provision of strategic leadership to a whole-of-government response by cabinet, supported by advice from ACT senior officials.

Mr Speaker, I commend this bill to the Assembly.

Debate (on motion by Mr Smyth) adjourned to the next sitting.


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