Page 4797 - Week 16 - Thursday, 29 November 1990
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it. I presume that the Alliance Government has a mixture of management styles and that Mr Humphries - and the Chief Minister, I presume - is quite happy with the board. I am happy to support that.
In this particular case, following a letter which, I believe, all members received from the ACT Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades Association, I presume that there is some type of a power struggle - perhaps that is an exaggeration, but that sort of concept - between the Minister, or the Minister and his bureaucracy and the current leadership of the ACT Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades Association who clearly prefer to ensure that the Minister does not appoint what was the president of the Bush Fire Brigades Association - which will now be the Bush Fire Council - but allows the chairman and deputy chairman to be appointed by the Minister rather than elected.
I am really here to ask Mr Duby to explain why he thinks it is necessary to make this change. I will be seeking to have a response to that. I also ask why it is that he thinks that the current system is not working or that it is necessary to change it. I think that issue needs to be dealt with before we go to the detail stage of the Bill.
I received this letter on 19 November. Because of other duties I have not had time to go through it in a great deal of detail. Having gone through the amendments suggested by the Bush Fire Council, it is important that members understand why it is that the Government has rejected those suggested amendments. Mr Duby, I presume that you actually have a copy of those suggested amendments from the Bush Fire Council. Am I correct?
Mr Duby: Which amendments are you referring to?
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, we had a letter from Michael Lonergan, president of the ACT Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades Association, who said that he believed that all members of the Assembly, being representatives of the people, should be made aware of the problems caused by the differences, and the differences he refers to are the differences between the current Bill and the recommendations of the ACT Bush Fire Council.
I think it is important for members of the Assembly to understand those differences because, as Mr Lonergan argues, they could affect, to a substantial degree, the ability of the ACT Bush Fire Council to minimise the potential of summer wild fires to impact on the ACT community. He goes on about why that is the case. He has presented a series of explanations as to what the differences are.
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