Page 3608 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2013
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has undertaken a comprehensive program to ensure that all fire trails are accessible to our emergency services vehicles this coming season. TAMS has completed all priority works to all fire trails. Let me be clear about that: all priority work on all fire trails. All of the trails can be accessed by our emergency services vehicles.
TAMS manages over 4½ thousand kilometres of fire trails. As Mr Smyth noted in his question, the ACT experienced two large, destructive storms in 2010 and 2012 which caused over $4½ million in damage. Repairs, necessarily so, have been prioritised and all strategic, high-priority fire trails were the first to be repaired. This included work to repair damaged bridges, large sections of washed out trails impassable to all vehicles, and damaged stormwater infrastructure such as culverts and drains.
The remaining lower priority works required some trails to be scheduled to be delivered over the coming 12 months. These works typically include clearing stormwater drains, decommissioning old forestry trails used in areas no longer managed for forestry operations and other such initiatives.
What is quite clear is that while some trails do warrant further work, that does not mean they are inaccessible. So to suggest that either TAMS or the ACT government has been negligent in its maintenance of fire trails is simply not true. There is always more work to be done. I think Neil Cooper best described it in Sunday’s paper when he was quoted as saying that it is like “owning the Sydney Harbour Bridge”. You start to paint it, and when you get to the other end, you simply have to start again. That is inevitably the case with the fire trails. They always require ongoing maintenance. It is the nature of having dirt trails through remote areas that are subject to weather conditions.
But the bottom line is that despite what Mr Smyth will attempt to say to the Canberra community, the Canberra community can rest assured—and this is the most important point as we come into a potentially risky fire season—that all fire trails in the ACT are accessible by our emergency services vehicles. That is the bottom line. That is what people need to know.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH: Given your answer, minister, will you now give the guarantee that you failed to give on Friday that all that is possible has been done to prepare the ACT for the coming fire season?
MR RATTENBURY: With regard to Mr Smyth’s reference to Friday, I think Mr Smyth reframed the guarantee he wanted from me several times, which is why I would not give him one. I have seen Mr Smyth do this in committees before. I am not going to play his games where he tries to put a frame that he wishes me to somehow agree to, that he keeps changing as the questioning goes on and tries to trick me into something that later on I will be held up against that is not necessarily the case.
I have been quite clear—and I can say it to the Canberra community—that every fire trail in the ACT that needs to be accessed is accessed. TAMS has a bushfire operational plan, as Mr Smyth knows. TAMS is delivering that bushfire operational
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