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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 164 ..

MR PRATT: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Chief Minister, can you confirm or deny the case, as AM asserted, that, despite briefings, ACT emergency services were preparing for a best-case scenario-that is what they have said-rather than a worst-case scenario?

MR STANHOPE: No, I cannot confirm or deny that. I am not quite sure what it means. I guess the best-case scenario would have been that the heavens would open and rain would fall and put the fire out, that the fire would miraculously stop, that Mike "Moses"Castle would stroll out into Stromlo Forest in his robes and turn the fire back. Mike Castle and Peter Lucas-Smith are good blokes, but Moses they ain't. No, I do not think that the best-case scenario was going to apply. I do not think that the fire was going to miraculously stop.

As for the worst-case scenario, I do not know what the Emergency Services Bureau, all our firefighting personnel, our urban fire service and our rural fire service were prepared to confront. I do not believe that in their minds they were prepared to confront a firestorm accompanied by winds of 200 kilometres an hour. I doubt that they were prepared for that.

Peter Lucas-Smith tells me he had never seen such an event in his life, and he has been a firefighter for over 30 years. He said that he had never seen it, never experienced it, and probably never imagined it possible, so perhaps he was not prepared for it. Perhaps-I cannot say; he will have to speak for himself-he was not prepared for something the ferocity of which he did not ever expect to arise.

As for the nonsense that the ACT authorities were prepared for a best-case scenario, whatever that is, perhaps a miraculous downpour from heaven, or a worst-case scenario, I doubt but I do not know-I would have to ask Mike Castle and Peter Lucas-Smith again-that they were expecting winds of up to 200 kilometres an hour, accompanied by fireballs belting through the air. I doubt that they were, but they will have to answer that for themselves. That begs the question: should they have? Was that within the realms of the scenario that perhaps they should have expected? That, of course, is the question that we need these inquiries to answer.

I do not have the answer. Despite the fact that I am an ex-secretary of a bushfire brigade, my state of understanding around bushfires never did proceed much beyond the old broken gum tree branch and wet potato bag. I am experienced in that sort of firefighting, almost always unsuccessful. In fact, the old Wolumla bushfire brigade of which I was secretary did not have too many successes. We realised our inefficiencies and tended to stand there and watch them. That is the level of my personal experience.

I am not a firefighter. I rely on those who have expertise in it. I am more than happy for those in whom we have vested that responsibility to be subjected to the most rigorous inquiry around their capacity, their professionalism and their responses at this fire. That is what we are going to do, but we are going to be fair about it. There will be no Salem witch-hunt here of the sort that the ABC favours. I am not going to stand for that. The ABC was straight out of Salem this morning; it would have done them proud.

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