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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 588 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

As the Chief Minister has informed us again and again, inquiries are looking into this. I am not necessarily 100 per cent happy about how those inquiries are going to operate, but they are under way and let us use the information that we will get out of them. Hopefully, the bushfire fighters themselves will be able to be part of those inquiries. Residents will be able to put forward their feelings and ideas about how they would have liked to have received information that would have helped them cope with the events of 18 January, and the best way to help them deal with future bushfires. But let us not pre-empt the outcome of those inquiries.

Hence, I will support the amendment moved by Ms Gallagher in that it does recognise that there is a lot of work being done in this area. We need to take note of that work and, hopefully, together as a community, educate ourselves as much as we can about bushfires and other threats that will have an impact on this city.

Amendment agreed to.

MR SPEAKER: The question now is that Mr Pratt's motion, as amended by the Gallagher amendment, be agreed to.

MR PRATT (6.24): Mr Speaker, a number of interesting points have been raised. I take the point raised by Mr Wood that school time is precious. I understand that it is a real challenge to find the time to squeeze anything else into the curriculum. But I would stress again that as we live in a bushfire-prone bush capital we have to try and find one hour per year per child for this type of fire education.

Secondly, I acknowledge the good points raised by Ms Gallagher and Ms Tucker with respect to the recognition of the danger of talking to children about arson; of how it is so difficult to reach into the hearts and minds of youth at risk and try to deter them; and the danger of talking about any form of bushfire education. I know that this is clearly an issue that has to be addressed. But I just ask the question: what is the alternative to doing what we are doing now, which does not seem to be too much at all?

I would hope that these kids will be reached somewhere in a proactive bushfire prevention education program. Certainly, we cannot single those kids out. We cannot identify and pull those kids to one side and say, "Okay you little beasts, we think you are potential arsonists, so we are going to educate you."Of course we cannot do that. But we just hope that through a proactive education program they can develop a love for their environment and they can learn and understand the implications and the dangers to people and infrastructure if they do silly things later on in life. We would just hope that sinks in, and I think that at least this is an initiative worth looking at.

Ms Gallagher talked about the critical incident management plan that schools are required to have. Of course, that is a given. All organisations, all institutions, must undertake that form of emergency management safety training and safety preparation. But that program, certainly in schools, does not include bushfire prevention training as a mandatory activity, so there still is a need for a stand-alone activity.

The minister of education said that she would like to have a look at these programs and see how relevant they are. Her predecessor pointed out to me last year that there are

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