Page 4791 - Week 16 - Thursday, 29 November 1990
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worthwhile for insurance companies, because we are not talking about a couple of actions for a couple of thousand dollars; we are talking about actions that can involve tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. We can rest assured that the insurance companies concerned could go out and hire the best legal minds in the country, the sharpest litigation lawyers. Our bush fire brigade men and women are going to find themselves in the witness box for weeks, with these hot guns going after them to trap them up to establish negligence.
Mr Collaery: Terry, do not go any further. You have your career to think of.
MR CONNOLLY: That is perfectly proper. That is what you hire a lawyer to do. I am not saying that there is anything inappropriate.
Mrs Grassby: The lawyers will love it. Bernard is looking for work when he goes from here.
MR CONNOLLY: Mrs Grassby makes a very good point. Lawyers would love this provision because what you are doing, in effect, is putting up a big flashing neon sign in the Australian Capital Territory and saying, "In the event of bushfire damage, please litigate here. We are prepared to take the burden. Come and have a crack".
In my example I was talking about a fire in the ACT. The point that Mrs Grassby made is even more crystal clear; the fire that starts in the ACT, in these circumstances of negligence, and goes across the border and wipes out Queanbeyan has the Australian Capital Territory shouldering the massive financial responsibility to get the insurance companies over the border off the hook. What about the fire that starts in Queanbeyan in identical circumstances, with the identical negligent activity of the New South Wales bushfire fighters, and comes into the ACT and wipes out a suburb and causes hundred of millions of dollars worth of property damage? There is no legal comeback. There is no possibility of ACT residents, or their insurance companies, suing the New South Wales Government.
We say that this is bad public policy. Everybody is out of step, apart from Mr Duby and Mr Collaery. Every other State is wrong, the urban fire services are wrong; but these two have the true welfare of the ACT at heart. The potential risk to which they are putting the ACT far outweighs the benefit. They are going to put bushfire fighters through a real grilling in the litigation that will inevitably follow. At the end of the day it is the taxpayer picking up the burden that ought to fall on the insurance companies.
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