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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 182 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I acknowledge that Mr Smyth has tried to do this by advocating an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, thereby giving it greater powers than the McLeod inquiry, and prescribing very detailed and specific terms of reference and processes for this proposed inquiry to follow. The motion has terms of reference (a) to (r), 18 of them, and prescribed processes (a) to (j), 10 in all, for the inquiry to follow.

In advocating such an inquiry, Mr Smyth is saying that the inquiries the government proposes to conduct are inadequate, but we are not convinced that that is the case. We agree that we need to deal with all the matters he has raised in his proposed terms of reference, although we believe that some of the broader planning matters are best dealt with in a separate process. Mr Pratt was concerned that the allegation on AM this morning could not be dealt with in a rigorous manner. But that would definitely come into the terms of reference for the coronial process. That is a full judicial process. I do not believe that it is appropriate to have another full judicial process on this issue running at the same time.

Mr Pratt quoted comments I made about why I thought the Gallop inquiry was important. I think this is a different situation. Before the Gallop inquiry, the government of the day was resisting attempts to have the issues dealt with. Mr Moore wanted them dealt with by the health committee of the Assembly. I was not happy with that. This is not an Assembly committee; it is an independent inquiry that the Labor government has proposed to deal with the bushfire issue.

There is no resistance from this government to full inquiries. The Chief Minister has said today-I do not think he needed to do that, because I understand that the coroner is to make a statement-that he was prepared to ensure that the coroner, under the Coroners Act, looked at the cause and origin of the fire. The coronial inquiry goes quite broadly to those issues that Mr Pratt expressed concern the McLeod inquiry could not deal with adequately. The issues he raised concerns about would be dealt with in the coronial judicial process, so I do not think his concerns in that area are justified, although I understand and agree that it is important that we have confidence that these matters can be looked at in a very rigorous way. I believe that that will happen.

The other concern I have with an inquiry under the Inquiries Act-we saw this happen with the Gallop inquiry-is a huge blow-out in legal costs. It is a legalistic process. I watched with interest the huge costs of the Gallop inquiry as government supported its officials with very expensive and highly qualified legal support. There was a terrible impact on members of the community who wanted to have a say in the process. It was not a particularly constructive process, to say the least. It was extremely expensive, and it was extremely intimidating for anybody who wanted to be involved but did not have a QC beside them. That is another reason I have a concern about Mr Smyth's proposal.

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