Page 3648 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (11.38): Pursuant to standing order 182A(b), I seek leave to move an amendment to this bill as it is minor and technical in nature.
Leave granted.
MR CORBELL: I move amendment No 1 that has been circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 3708]. I table a supplementary explanatory statement to the amendment.
This government amendment is in response to issues raised by the United Firefighters Union and the Volunteer Brigades Association concerning the power of the Emergency Services Commissioner to direct a chief officer to undertake response or recovery operations. The amendment addresses those concerns.
Clause 9 of the bill provides that, for the effective coordination of an emergency, the commissioner may direct a chief officer to undertake response or recovery operations. The amendment defines the coordination of an emergency as the “bringing together of the emergency services and other agencies and resources to support the response to the emergency”. This term is derived directly from the Australasian Inter-Service Incident Management System, or AIIMS, as it is known, which is a common incident management system that supports all ACT emergency services in managing emergencies.
To further explain the meaning, an emergency might start out under the command of an incident controller from one emergency service, referred to as a level 1 incident. The emergency may then escalate to a level 2 or level 3 incident, requiring all of the emergency services and government agencies to work together in delivering an effective response. The lead agency, as determined by the Emergencies Act, will nominate the incident controller to control the appropriate response to the emergency by multiple services and agencies. Above this level of command and control sits the Emergency Services Commissioner, along with chief officers and directors-general across the ACT government, who collectively support the emergency response and recovery operations and provide advice to the emergency management committee of the cabinet. In the words of the Victorian royal commission:
It is at this higher overarching level that the emergency services commissioner needs to monitor the emergency response and ensure the effective coordination of response and recovery activities to achieve the overall outcomes in managing the emergency.
This power achieves that aim. Let me elaborate on that a little further. Under our act we give the responsibility for ensuring a coordinated emergency response to the ESA commissioner. If something goes wrong, if something fails during an emergency, the ESA commissioner will be the statutory officer held accountable for the failure to deliver a coordinated emergency response, and that is as it should be. But the act does not currently give the commissioner the power to compel or ensure a coordinated
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