Page 224 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
and have resulted in people reporting to each other that they are continually tired and they do not know why.
We also have to remember—and I know this not from my own personal experience but from being in touch with people who suffered the events of 2003—that the fires have brought back very vivid memories of that terrifying time, and those people need to be supported as well.
Mr Rattenbury’s motion rightly calls for a whole-of-government approach to manage the conditions that affect life and work for Canberrans. Mr Rattenbury’s motion is, however, lacking in one respect. He acknowledges the work involved in the distribution of P2 face masks. I applaud that acknowledgement and I applaud the work that was done by the Chief Health Officer to facilitate the distribution of masks where they were needed in the first instance. Sadly, he does not acknowledge that much of this supply was released by the commonwealth from the stockpiles of masks held for a pandemic emergency. I would like to put on the record the Canberra Liberals’ thanks and appreciation to the federal government for making those masks available so readily and quickly for the people of Canberra.
There is no doubt that the 2019-20 bushfire season so far has been quite bad, although I think it is still a matter of statistical debate as to whether it has been unprecedented. In many aspects, in the ACT we have been relatively lucky. Although large areas of the ACT have been burnt by bushfires, and many of our rural and remote residents have had very bad experiences, thankfully, due primarily to the dedicated and positive action of our emergency services and the Rural Fire Service, the Orroral and Beard fires wielded very little damage on our urban areas and we did not suffer any fatalities in the fires here. The 2003 bushfires remain the worst incident in terms of loss of homes, infrastructure and lives, as well as our parks and forests. Nonetheless, as happened in 2003, the 2019-20 bushfire experience will teach us many lessons.
A royal commission into bushfires will be welcome and I am glad that the Chief Minister is broadly supportive of the proposal. I am also broadly supportive of the proposal, but I also think that a lot of work needs to be done in relation to the lessons learned from previous fires which have not been implemented. The recommendations from a whole swag of bushfire inquiries across the nation have not been implemented, and we should learn from that as well.
There is much to be learned from our local experience, and it is not just from the effects of smoke haze. Already issues are emerging that we have seen in news reports as recently as today, and as was touched on by Mrs Jones in her motion yesterday. There are many other issues that relate to the ACT’s bushfire experience and they should be considered as we develop ways of improving our preparedness for future bushfire seasons. A whole-of-government approach is the right approach, but it should be more broad ranging than just the impact of smoke on our community, as shocking as that was.
I hope the government will take Mr Rattenbury’s motion and put it into a more broad-ranging review, consulting widely. I hope that we will build on our learnings from 2003 and this year as well, and I hope that we will be ready for anything that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video