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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 618 ..

MR STANHOPE: No, you want to sack them. It is a matter of grave concern that you are prepared to be that personal, just for your own petty political purposes.

As I say, the majority of the funding relevant to my portfolio is the establishment and operation of the taskforce. Despite the views of the Liberals, the taskforce is operating extremely well-it has been wonderfully successful. It has enormous support within the community. From all the feedback I get, the taskforce is widely regarded as having done a sterling job, and it continues to do so. I speak not just in the context of the people who form the taskforce, but for all the supporting staff-the ACT public servants who are very much part and parcel of it.

As I have said before, and will say again, the great unsung heroes in relation to this catastrophe, and our recovery from it, have been the members of the ACT public service. The ACT public service has been magnificent in its response to the bushfires. They are now, and will probably continue to be, the unsung heroes of the bushfire recovery.

I want to acknowledge the enormous effort the ACT public service is applying in the recovery effort. Their performance has been outstanding. They are performing over and above the call of duty, or the demands of duty, to the point where a significant number of them have worked themselves so hard and so long that the strain and stress of the exercise is visible on their faces and in their bodies. I do not know how we are going to respond to that. It is a growing issue that so many of our public servants are working very hard. For the past six weeks, they have driven themselves to a point where they are potentially endangering their health.

We are seeking to respond to that issue. We are providing significant support to our public servants across the board. We are mindful of the fact that many of our public servants lost their homes, but are nevertheless dealing with the joint issues. I do not have an exact number, but around 100 of the destroyed homes were owned by ACT public servants. They are all at work. So there is a whole group of our own workers dealing with the devastation and loss but nevertheless continuing to work, in many instances, on the response to the bushfires. That is an outstanding effort by our public servants. I applaud them for that, and will continue to do so.

One issue covered in the appropriation bill is communications. One of the issues raised with the government, and with the taskforce in particular, over the past few weeks has been the need for us to ensure that the lines of communication are open-that all of the people affected by the bushfire are aware of what the government response is, what the community response has been, what services are available and what the future is.

We are very mindful of the need for communication to be as full as possible, complete and open. We need to ensure that everybody affected by the fire, and everybody who responded to the fire, is fully aware of all the initiatives being pursued, in order that there be no misunderstanding or confusion around the available support-and the government's response to the broad range of issues that we are pursuing.

The range of issues is broad and the issues are deeply complex. We have touched on that in this debate, to some extent. The complexity of some of the insurance and reinsurance

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