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Canberra Times . . Page.. 354 ..

MR BERRY: Hang on a minute. You interjected, and you were not pulled up; so I will take the opportunity to respond. The fact of the matter is that it has nothing to do with the sorts of things that you are going to raise. This is about New South Wales authorities conducting burn-offs and the failure of an ACT Minister to deliver a consultation process which he promised. That is what it is about. Of course, Mr Humphries will leap to his feet shortly, I suspect, and moan about a press release that I issued about saving trees in Tuggeranong. We know that Mr Humphries has the old chainsaw in his pocket and he is targeting those trees and down they will come, without looking for some sort of a suitable alternative site for measuring pollution in Tuggeranong. Measuring pollution is not going to be of much help if Mr Humphries does not get on his bike and talk to the people in New South Wales about dealing with the issue of the coordination of burn-offs in that State.

This important issue has to be dealt with by the Minister. There is no sign that he took any action early in the piece, and that is the problem. It was a serious enough problem to warrant the Minister making some strong statements on the issue to the Canberra Times. They were reported widely. The community would have been misled into thinking that Mr Humphries was doing something; but they would have been extremely disappointed when they found out that nothing had been done, that no work on the subject had been done by Mr Humphries's office. What had you done? Nothing.

Mr Humphries: You will find out.

MR BERRY: We will be better informed in a moment, it appears. Mr Humphries might well, then, tell us why it took him almost a month to do something. That would be interesting. Did he have a broken leg? Was he off sick? Was he off on holidays with the rest of you? It was not as if you had too much to do; you were sitting around waiting for Mrs Carnell to make up her mind on the budget. She made up her mind on that score: No budget yet.

If Mr Humphries can come up with a good excuse for not doing anything, that will be very interesting; but I think the Assembly has an obligation to draw attention to the failure of a Minister to deliver what really was a little promise, that was made publicly, on an important issue which affects the atmosphere in the Territory. We all have to breathe it. If at the end of the day there was in place some sort of a consultation process, one could expect that, in the case where it could not be avoided, there would be adequate warning that a burn-off was going to occur in New South Wales and that there would be serious pollution as a result. When this occurs during the day, you can stop people engaging in physical activity and keep them indoors, away from the polluted atmosphere as much as possible. This very simple procedure could have been arranged by means of a few phone calls, on about 31 March 1995, between Mr Humphries's office and the relevant Ministers in New South Wales, and there could have been a better outcome. But there was no evidence reported that anything was done in those days. So, I think we are entitled to attempt to express regret about the failure of the Minister to take the necessary action to put in place some sort of a procedure which would have dealt with the problem we were faced with a month later. That is not to say that it could all have been done within a month. These things take time.

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