Page 2555 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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such as this which are off budget and we should be scrutinising it. I repeat, Mr Speaker, that the Public Accounts Committee will probably take this Auditor-General's report, as it has done with all of the others, review it and, if necessary, report back to the Assembly on those matters we think are significant.
Debate interrupted.
ADJOURNMENT
MR SPEAKER: Order! It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Electricity and Water Authority
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.31): I want to take a few minutes of the time in the adjournment debate to publicly commend and congratulate officers of ACTEW. As people would be aware, we had a severe storm in Canberra yesterday afternoon and last evening. The paper this morning reported that it was the worst storm in some 24 years.
As a result of that, during the last 36 hours a lot of ACTEW crews have been out on the roads. Last night there were some 60 ACTEW personnel who worked right through the night. A few of them, I am told, were able to get a bit of a tea break at about 12.30 am. Many were not able to take advantage of even that. The last of the crews came back into the depots about 4.30 am after completing, in many cases, some 14 hours without a break in extremely difficult and unpleasant weather conditions and, of course, right through the night.
During the 36-hour period of the storm some 5,000 people suffered a loss of supply of power at one stage or another, but due to the exemplary work of the ACTEW crews most people had power supplies back on within an hour. The majority of problems were caused by trees falling. It was the efficient work of the ACTEW crews through the night - mopping up, chopping down those trees and putting power back on - that made most Canberrans able to wake up this morning with power on. I think that exemplifies the service that ACTEW provides to the community and I commend all those ACTEW crew members who worked through last night to ensure that Canberrans had power supplies.
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