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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3817 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

for a community like this to make. We are a small community. It takes a few minutes, by car, to cross from one side of the city to the other.

Mr Smyth: Not since speed cameras.

MR HUMPHRIES: Not quite as quickly as was the case before Mr Smyth's speed cameras, but certainly it can be done fairly quickly. The community is a young community. There is not a long history of entrenched organisational structures which need to be uprooted so that we can effect appropriate change. So it is surprising perhaps that the ACT has been slower than other places in Australia to put in place comprehensive emergency management legislation. It is, however, absolutely vital that we carry this process forward.

I have noted the comments of Mr Hargreaves about the Government's plans to have all services under one Act and Ms Tucker's comments about wanting to make services come together in a way which may not be appropriate for those particular services in some cases. I would identify the single most serious issue facing the provision of emergency services in this Territory, in my time as Minister for emergency services, as the slowness we experience in bringing services into a position where they work together effectively. The lack of that synchronisation of the services, to the extent that it is still an issue - and it is less of an issue today than it was a few years ago - is a serious problem facing our community and one which we need to address in this Assembly.

Only a couple of years ago the Government proposed the co-location of the ACT Emergency Service with the ACT bush fire brigades and some reorganisation to bring those two organisations close together without formally amalgamating them. At the time, there was an enormous hue and cry about that. There were claims that this was going to destroy the bush fire brigades or, alternatively, the emergency service brigades; that people would defect in droves; that morale would fall; that there would be all sorts of problems. That moving together of those two services - it is not really an amalgamation - on the one base has occurred, and I believe that today both those services are stronger than ever as a result of that change.

Those two services are not the key services providing emergency services in the ACT. The three services which are key to the provision of emergency responses are the Australian Federal Police, the ACT Fire Brigade and the ACT Ambulance Service, and it is vital that we continue to push to bring those services to work better with each other and to understand each other better.

Mr Hargreaves suggested the Government's plan was to have all those services under the one Act. He is basically right about that, but I would qualify that by saying that it is not the Government's intention - and I do not foresee a situation where it would happen - to bring the AFP under that legislation. Perhaps after a very long period of time it might be appropriate to do that. I do not foresee that being the case. The other services have a focus on emergency response. The Federal Police have other objectives as well, and it is not appropriate to treat the AFP purely as an emergency response agency. This Bill is principally about other services, although the AFP plays a role, and

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