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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2539 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

He ends by saying:

Where structural collapse strikes within our communities one hopes we all can provide the same level of expertise displayed by our Australian colleagues.

They are significant words of praise from a world expert in the field. Our service personnel should take great comfort from that praise and this expression of thanks on behalf of the Canberra community for all their efforts. Of course, however, we also extend our sympathies to those who lost loved ones in this disaster.

I present the following paper:

Thredbo Landslide - ACT's Response - ministerial statement, 27 August 1997.

I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition) (3.50): When I first learnt of the tragedy at Thredbo, it struck me that a place so isolated from the larger communities would have some difficulty in putting together a successful rescue mission and that that might affect the outcome for those people who eventually died as a result of this tragedy. It soon became plain that the organisation of forces to assist was well and truly under way. I was quite proud to see that people from the ACT emergency services were involved at an early stage. I suppose that my interest in these matters goes back to a former life when I worked in emergency services, to the days when, in one way or other as Health Minister, I was associated with doctors and nurses, and with ambulance officers, who were located in Health in those days, and to my association with police officers in earlier days. It was quite impressive to watch the response as it came up on the nation's television screens.

As we all know, you do not feel the temperature, you do not smell the smells and you do not sense the arduous nature of the work by watching television screens. You could sense the emotion in many ways - from the looks on people's faces, from the tone of people presenting stories and from the messages that came back from rescue workers. One of the most touching things for me was to watch the way that all of the emergency services workers put their shoulder to the wheel and very carefully and methodically dealt with the situation at hand.

All of the time, of course, one felt in the pit of one's stomach that something had gone terribly wrong and the likelihood of survival of anybody was, at best, very slight. Just looking at it on a television screen, never at any time did I feel that there was much chance of anybody surviving. I suppose if one had been on site it would have been more obvious how difficult the circumstances were. Miracle of miracles, somebody was dragged from all of the chaos and survived, with a very tragic story to tell and a story that will be told many times over.

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