Page 3649 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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emergency response. We cannot give the commissioner the responsibility to be accountable but then not give the commissioner the powers to ensure he can enact his responsibilities, and that is what this amendment is all about.
Let me give members an example. We see, as I outlined earlier, an incident escalate from a relatively minor one at level 1, to level 2 or level 3, a more major emergency. It requires the coordination across our emergency agencies. It requires the support of different agencies, as well as the lead agency. But there is a disagreement between services about who should be responsible for incident management. This is a classic example of the need for leadership in coordination of the emergency response.
Currently, under our legislation, if two chief officers cannot agree on who the incident controller should be and who the lead agency should be, the commissioner does not have the power to settle that dispute. This is an unacceptable situation. It is a scenario that we know has the potential to arise, particularly as, for example, fires move from the rural area towards the urban area of the ACT.
We must make sure that the commissioner can ensure a coordinated response. In the scenario I have outlined we must make sure the commissioner has the power to make it clear which agency is the lead agency and which agencies will act in support of that lead agency.
This is the example I like to use when it comes to addressing the issue we are trying to address today. We cannot give the commissioner the responsibility to be accountable for the coordination of emergencies and then fail to give the commissioner the powers they need to ensure they can act in accordance with their responsibilities and accountabilities.
I heard the comments from the opposition in this debate, saying that the government can wait. This is not about the government getting involved in the on-the-ground response and management of an emergency. But it is about making sure the government is kept informed because the public now have a very strong and real expectation that the government will keep them informed as to what is occurring in relation to an emergency.
It does not even have to be a large emergency. A large building fire in the city centre has the potential to cause alarm, distress and concern to a very large number of people in our community. They expect the government to be informed, up to date and to keep them informed. We must make sure that our emergency services leaders have the capacity to be up to date and to keep the government informed so that the government can keep the community informed.
These are not considerations for after an incident. These are the real-time expectations of the community when it comes to emergency management today. We have seen it around the country. We have seen it with large and small emergencies in other states and territories. And it is critical that our legislative arrangements reflect these real-time, practical and immediate expectations of our community.
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