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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 539 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

If you have information, Mr Cornwell, that the New South Wales Rural Fire Service did not bother to use the equipment and the aircraft available to it to attack the fire at MacIntyres Hut, which it had accepted full responsibility for and which is the fire that crashed into Duffy, then I guess we would all be interested to know why the New South Wales Rural Fire Service took those decisions.

Those are the questions that will be answered through the three inquiries that are currently running. In the New South Wales coronial inquest into the MacIntyres Hut fire the New South Wales coroner is looking at the New South Wales Rural Fire Service's response to the MacIntyres Hut fire, along with other fires in New South Wales. The ACT coroner is looking at all of the fires that burnt across the ACT and, as we debated this morning, will investigate every single aspect of those fires-how they started, how they burnt, what steps we took, how well prepared we were, whether we were up to the task, how well our services performed, whether we could have done things better, whether decisions we took might have been better not taken, whether decisions we did not take should have been taken. That whole range of issues will be looked at, and they will be looked at in a very vigorous way.

I have a concern. Mr Smyth raised the same questions this morning, in an endeavour to assist the process, not in any way determined to undermine the McLeod inquiry or destroy its integrity or any support for it. Mr Smyth said this morning, "Mr Stanhope, as Chief Minister, where anybody seeks to raise reasonable questions about what happened, has attacked them in the most over-the-top ways that you can imagine."There are questions out there. We have all heard them. Everyone in this place has heard them. Everybody out there is talking about them. Why were the Harden units turned back? If they were turned back, I guess we need to go on and ask the next question: by whom were they turned back? The Harden fire units were under-

Mr Smyth: That is what Canberra residents want to know.

MR STANHOPE: That is right. We need to get the answers to these questions and we will. The Harden fire units were under the control of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, as I understand it. I have not had formal briefings on this. As I understand it, no Harden fire unit at any stage of the fire confronting the ACT came under the control of the Emergency Services Bureau of the ACT. If the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, to which the Harden fire service were responsible, turned the Harden fire units back, then that is information we need to know. If they did, why?

Similarly, the other units that Mr Smyth referred to this morning-the Yass units, the Bombala units, the Batemans Bay units-are New South Wales units. They were under the control of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service on the day of the fire. I have received no briefing on this. I am not aware that at any stage there was any communication between the Batemans Bay units and the ACT Emergency Services Bureau. There are questions which need to be answered.

Questions around the New South Wales Rural Fire Service's response to the fire-essentially the question that Mr Cornwell asked today-are questions which will be answered by the coronial inquest into the New South Wales fire, namely, the MacIntyres Hut fire.

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