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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 585 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
ACT government land managers, in consultation with the residents, give priority to fuel reduction and to bushfire safety awareness education for residents in the
identified high hazard areas, eg those referred to in ... ;
The 16th recommendation is:
Education programs be implemented to inform the public of the bushfire risks in the ACT, the need for hazard reduction burning and the inevitability of some impact from smoke;
The 21st recommendation is:
The Chief Territory Planner, on the advice of the Chief Fire Control Officer of the Bushfire Service, be responsible for the declaration of urban areas as bushfire hazardous areas;
The 22nd recommendation is:
The Building Code of Australian standards and guidelines relevant to bushfire prone areas be adopted in the ACT and the building control authority ensure their application in declared bushfire hazardous areas;
The 23rd recommendation is:
Urban edge guidelines be revised by Public Works and Services taking into account bushfire hazard assessments; and
The 24th recommendation is:
The revised guidelines be applied where feasible to all existing and future urban edge areas.
If you look at those recommendations you can see that they do not so much deal with emergency management, which is in the first part of Mr Pratt's motion, but they deal with prevention. You will see that they require other supporting work, and that is obviously about what zones are declared bushfire-prone areas et cetera. That is work that is being undertaken by the government at the moment. I think it is logical that that work has to be done to support those sorts of recommendations. These recommendations are calling for that work, and that is why I do not think it is practical to have a motion that calls for something to be done immediately.
I agree that these recommendations should have been progressed. They should have been progressed by the previous government and they were not. I strongly believe, and I have already said so in this place, that they need to be progressed now. Mr Corbell has responded in terms of the processes that this government has outlined for determining areas that are vulnerable. I am not totally happy with this but I am watching with interest.
Emergency management briefing programs are slightly different, except that there was reference in this work to the inevitability of some impact from smoke, and I understand that to mean burning off. So the emergency management question is slightly different. I will be supporting Ms Gallagher's amendment because I think these are good ideas and
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