Page 1987 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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This is life or death. Go back to 2003; this is 500 homes. I think that to rush this forward tonight would be most unfortunate. They are the issues that we are confronted with tonight. We have had a review. Some have criticised the founding basis of that review. We have a response from the reviewing team that some people have pointed out to me is inaccurate. From some of that inaccurate data we have drawn conclusions that lead us to this bill tonight.
The bill is full of inconsistencies. We are going to get rid of the BAZ but we are going to keep the BAZ. We are going to clarify that the RFS can go to fires but they are not necessarily going to be in charge of fires. We have got officers who have to meet on a fire ground to determine who is in charge and if they cannot then they go up the chain. If this were not so serious, it could be a very funny episode on some of the popular TV shows that we currently have running in this country.
We dispense with the expertise and the role of the council to make it a consultative body. All they get to do is consult on the criteria for the selection of the head of the Rural Fire Service as proposed by the commissioner, not on who gets the job.
These are serious issues. I would ask members to consider putting this off until August so that there is more time for consultation. As I have said, the captains are being briefed tonight, I guess in the expectation that the bill would have been passed by now. But the captains are the ones who are directly affected by this because they command the volunteers in the field.
There are concerns from the UFU over what is in and what is out the zone. As I have said, that is a fight that is probably going to go on for a long time and may never be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides. But it does not mean that we have to rush this through tonight. There is nothing that I read that stops the preparation of the maps that define the urban and the rural. That work can continue apace. I suspect that a lot of people would like to have some input into that. We have got concerns from the RFS members. We have got concerns from the UFU members, who will be directly and considerably affected by these amendments that we make tonight.
With that, members, I suggest that perhaps we do not proceed this evening, that what we do is adjourn and we get answers to the questions that have been raised. We check the accuracy of information provided and we come back to this in August, by which time a lot of the work that seems to be the urgent reason for passing this tonight could have started and may well be completed. That would be the sensible approach to this bill today.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.54): This bill makes a number of changes to the Emergencies Act in order to implement the recommendation from a review of the act that was conducted last year. The bill will impose increased restrictions on activities that are permitted during total fire bans. Currently the act makes it an offence to light a fire during a total fire ban but does not specifically restrict activities that could cause a fire to ignite. The bill addresses this by creating a new offence of undertaking a high-risk activity in the open during a total fire ban period.
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