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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 519 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

resources, that is timely but that also respects the judicial process the coroner is undertaking.

Supposedly, this motion is all about giving protection to witnesses. If that is the argument, then the government has addressed that. The Chief Minister has said that he will work with Mr Stefaniak to address the flaws in Mr Stefaniak's bill and to ensure that witnesses in the McLeod inquiry have adequate protection. But the opposition need to make the argument as to what is the shortcoming in the coroner's judicial process that requires a second judicial inquiry. What is it?

Mrs Dunne: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have sat here and listened to the Chief Minister and the Minister for Planning talk about the McLeod inquiry as a judicial inquiry. There has never been a suggestion that it is a judicial inquiry. It is not being conducted by a judicial officer.

MR SPEAKER: That is not a point of order. Resume your seat.

MR CORBELL: I am referring to the coroner's inquiry. The coroner's inquiry is a judicial inquiry. We do not need another one.

MR SPEAKER: The minister's time has expired.

MS TUCKER (11.51): I have been listening carefully to this debate. I do not believe that it is revisiting a previous debate just for political reasons. I will not comment on the Liberals' reasons, but my view is that this is an important debate. I do not support debates that are for political reasons. I would not support the Liberals going through the recent debate on the Gungahlin motion again. I think this is a different debate, because time has passed since we had the opportunity to consider what sort of inquiry we should be looking at. Quite a lot has happened since the first debate.

I now have quite serious concerns about the current form of the McLeod inquiry. Those concerns have been informed by consultation with people in the community. We have heard at length about the concerns of the volunteer firefighters. The Liberals have covered that in the debate, so I will not go into detail. A serious concern has been expressed by the voluntary firefighters, who have 700 members who feel that the current form of the inquiry does not give them confidence.

As I understand it, the main argument the government has put forward this morning, apart from the argument that Mr Smyth's motion is cheap politics and revisits a previous debate, is that the motion proposes another judicial inquiry in parallel with the coronial inquiry. The McLeod inquiry is not a judicial inquiry. Mr McLeod is not a jurist. I am concerned that the arguments put by the government have been based on the question of what the coroner will not deal with and the belief that another inquiry would be doing the same work as the coroner and overlapping the coroner's inquiry.

From listening to the arguments from Labor, I am left with the question: what is the point of the McLeod inquiry at all? According to Labor, the point is that the McLeod inquiry has to get quick answers to important questions. That is the answer the government gave to that question.

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