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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1669 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

As I said, I do not think that passing this motion will help in any way the negotiating position of the ACT as it is working with the federal government to receive adequate funding for the services it provides.

MR PRATT (4.44), in reply: Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to pick up on a couple of points that have been made in the debate. Ms Tucker is quite right when she says that the conditions that the ACT faces from bushfires will continue to be quite dangerous. She is quite right when she says that we can expect that we will have to at least attempt to maintain a high degree of readiness to face that danger. I would add that, given the internal security needs of the ACT and the security threat in our region and the rest of this country, we must maintain a high readiness for those types of threats.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Ms Tucker points out quite rightly-and I am willing to concede the issue-that the Commonwealth's demand that fire services be paid for on a call-out basis is not particularly smart and not particularly acceptable. I do agree that the Assembly needs to put the pressure on to try and negotiate a better deal.

Mr Wood: Would you withdraw your motion?

MR PRATT: No, I will not because-and I stress this point-whilst the Assembly needs to negotiate a more effective agreement it does not mean that we should deny access to that funding over a two-year period. The point of this motion is that, for the sake of arguing for a fairly small percentage in terms of what was previously made available and what we are seeking agreement on now, we have shot the goose and we have not accessed the very important funding that should be made available to our fire service units.

We have gone for two years without any funding-albeit, I agree, funding that might have been better negotiated. But I do not see why this government or this Assembly in general cannot negotiate with the federal authorities to improve the agreement, but accepting what is available now. Don't tell me we cannot accept what is available now and then negotiate catching up with what we believe we might be entitled to. That is the point of this motion, and that is why it is unacceptable for Ms Tucker and the minister to say that this motion has no role to play simply because we are having a bit of a tough time negotiating with the federal authorities.

I repeat: the ACT through 2001 and 2002 knew that we were approaching a dangerous fire season, and we did not go out as a community, under the leadership of this government, to acquire as many of the resources as we possibly could to make ourselves ready, to put ourselves onto a higher level of readiness, to face the approaching fire seasons. It is pathetic for Ms Tucker and the minister to point out that this is all just a fight, a bureaucratic spat, with the federal authorities and, therefore, we can excuse the fact that we have not acquired all the funding we should have acquired to make our fire units ready and more capable to face the challenges they have to face.

Mr Speaker, the minister has crowed about how terrific it is that the Chief Minister's Department has been pig-headed and bureaucratic in its negotiations with the federal

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