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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4784 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

I understand that the Government is well and truly into the implementation phase of this restructure, and I accept that; just as I accept that it has been a long and drawn out process to come to the point where the restructure is now at that implementation phase. Mr Speaker, it is my view that the Government is at fault in trying to implement such a major change at the start of probably the busiest season for emergency services. From what I know of Canberra's climatic conditions, it would seem to me that spring and summer are always going to be the busiest seasons. It may have been very advisable to have held over this restructure, continued talking about it, continued consulting on it, until, say, the autumn and winter period, when there may have been some quieter times. But it seems to me that you are putting real stress on the whole service. Even if everybody agreed with the restructure, you are putting real stress on them to expect them to implement that at a very busy time of year and a time of year when many of the volunteers, as well as the officers involved, could be on leave and could be out of town. That is a real difficulty.

Mr Speaker, I believe the Government should proceed with its implementation. I think it would be extremely disruptive to an already very difficult and contentious process to stop that implementation. But I do believe that, through the committee process, it is appropriate to give groups of people who feel that they have not been properly consulted and who are not satisfied with the process that the Government has in place an opportunity to place formally on the record their objections, and to oblige the Government to respond, again on the record, to those objections. I do accept that there is at least one major group involved in emergency services which does not feel satisfied with the way the process has been developed and the way it is continuing to be implemented and which does not have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the current process to deliver a fair hearing to them. It is my view that they deserve a fair hearing but that that hearing should be more in the nature of a conciliation, a mediation or a response to their concerns, rather than just riding roughshod over them.

Mr Speaker, the Opposition will be supporting Mr Osborne's motion, but I should say that we do not expect the Legal Affairs Committee to start looking again at the structure of emergency services. As Mr Humphries says, that work has been done at extreme length. But we do believe that people who are involved in emergency services deserve to have their concerns expressed in public and addressed in public. For that reason, we are prepared to allow the Legal Affairs Committee inquiry to go ahead.

MR MOORE (11.03): Mr Speaker, it is interesting, I think, that Mr Humphries actually defeated the motion himself when he said he recognised that there was a series of conflicts; there was one group of people saying one thing, and one set of people saying another thing; there was a series of differences that were clearly, as yet, unresolved. Having listened to the debate and having talked to a series of people about this issue, it seems to me that that is the case. There is still a series of outstanding issues, and there is one of two ways of dealing with that. You can stomp your way through it, as is the Government's wont and has become their practice in trying to do things; or you can take just a little time and assess what are the concerns and then proceed in an open way along those lines.

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