Page 127 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (10.46): The Canberra Liberals are happy to support the amendment. It does not substantially change the purpose of the motion and acknowledges perhaps up-to-date information from the government about their work. I thank all members for their participation.
Yesterday’s debate was a different debate; it was a time for reflecting on the impact of the fire and the great things that were happening. Today I am trying to do justice to those who have contacted me with things that they would like to see done better. It is good and right and just that we should come here and discuss this and make sure that it is on the record and the government has plenty of information to use to respond with. It also will be good to have a public process for people to submit their thoughts and ideas.
There are people who are hurting. There are people who disagree with things that have been done. It does not take away from the great work that has been done. As Mr Parton said, we would all have to agree that things are at least 20 times better than they were in 2003. However, there are ongoing mental health concerns for our region and for some people in the ACT who have been affected, either directly or indirectly, including people in the areas south of Tharwa who have been directly fighting the Orroral Valley fire, as well as people in the Pialligo area who experienced the Beard fire directly.
Some really great ladies from an organisation called Picking up the Peaces were saying to me the other day that after a major incident like the one we have seen at the coast—or, indeed, the smoke haze; as Minister Rattenbury says, we did not really previously consider what that could be like and how to respond—there can be very severe ongoing mental health concerns for some individuals. After a big disaster such as has happened down the coast, the suicide rate in the two years following the incident can be much higher than the deaths that occurred during the fires themselves.
That is something that we need to keep an eye on. As Minister Rattenbury said, we need to make sure there is plenty of public information about how to respond. It is an area that the whole community is learning about. There is a great openness in Canberra to learning how to manage mental health better, but we still lack lots of public information.
While Mr Rattenbury is in the chamber, I want to mention again something I talked about yesterday when he was not here. The work that the prison did in preparing meals for the people on the fireground was an excellent contribution. We should learn from that what the people in our prison can do. It can be good for them and good for the community. There is great scope there for more to be done on that basis. We know that the prison needs more opportunities for work. Community service is probably something we have not thought of in a big way in the ACT before.
Let me go to matters that it is very clear we still have to resolve for our firefighting forces and emergency services. There are some significant frustrations in the RFS that I have been contacted about. We have had over 1,000 days without an enterprise agreement for Fire & Rescue, which is a long time to wait. There are worries in
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