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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 612 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

ACT. The issue is whether or not that will in itself mean our suburbs are safer. The issue that has to be addressed is: will it make our suburbs safer?

The initial assessment has indicated, certainly to me, that a declaration of bushfire-prone areas in and of itself will not do a lot to make our suburbs safer in the short to medium term. What will determine that is how we manage the urban interface-the land around our suburbs-what sort of plantings occur there and what sort of land management practices are in place in the area of land immediately adjacent to our suburbs. I think that is well worth the consideration, and it is the work the government is doing now.

Dr Phil Cheney, one of Australia's leading bushfire experts, in a recent Catalyst program on the ABC about the bushfire event, highlighted that the setback from the forest areas adjacent to Warragamba Avenue in Duffy to the houses was more than the Australian standard. So the level of separation was more than the existing standard. We need to keep these issues in mind and to be even more cautious than we have been to date. These are matters that PALM will manage through its examination of bushfire-prone areas.

I will now turn to the response of ACT Health, both from a public hospital perspective and from a mental health perspective, which is the ongoing challenge thrust in our faces. In the immediate response, Canberra Hospital had 312 presentations and 69 admissions over the period 18 January to 27 January.

That does not include the small number of patients that had to be transferred to Sydney because of the serious nature of their injuries, particularly burns. The mother and daughter in Concorde Hospital are in a serious but stable condition in the intensive care unit, and the burns patient in the Royal North Shore Hospital is also in a satisfactory condition. The extent of their injuries has been serious, but they are all recovering well.

The pressure on the Canberra Hospital was significant. They initiated their disaster response planning, and the disaster response planning worked well-even with the very serious issues they were faced with. Loss of power to non-essential equipment occurred at the peak of the emergency, and the computer system also failed at a crucial time during the emergency, so records management had to be managed manually.

Even with that, the Canberra Hospital performed outstandingly. It had its highest ever level of activity in accident and emergency during the bushfire crisis, and its response was very good.

But that puts pressure on other parts of the health system that have to be taken account of in the budget. It meant, for instance, that 11 people had to be deferred from the elective surgery waiting list in response to the disaster. Everyone appreciates that people in a disaster have priority, but that has an impact on other parts of our system and has to be taken account of in the financing. That is one of the issues addressed in the appropriation bill today.

There was a range of other serious public health issues. The most immediate and ongoing impact has been on the Health Protection Service in Holder. The Health Protection Service lost a significant part of its laboratories-

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