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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2789 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

He talks about the fact that one of the contracted graders had been damaged in early January and by default, either on the part of the contractor or ESB, had not at once been replaced. If we are just lifting the existing structure and dropping it outside the public service as a stat authority, will the issues about how you fix these things be addressed?

He goes on to communications, the lack of warnings and the dogged optimism. He talks about the facilities at Curtin being inadequate and not working on the day. He then talks about a central management that you would have to say wobbled early on and was overwhelmed on the day. If ESB failed on the bushfires, on the day, what is the application of that then to other emergencies: if we had a flood, if we had a terrorist incident, for instance. Can we just lift their model and drop it outside? I do not believe so, and I think you have to ask those questions.

However, there is another inherent contradiction in the McLeod report. Mr McLeod says on page 243, "the basic structure of the ACT Public Service, which underpinned the whole operation...is fundamentally...sound". If he means that to apply to emergency services, then that conclusion needs to be reconciled with his findings of fact, some of which were illustrated above. The whole system was not sound and if, as he says, it is fundamentally sound, why are we changing to a Victorian model? These are more questions that I think would indicate that perhaps we need to be a little bit more cautious than the government is.

We need to go back to the fact that Mr McLeod does not deal in detail with the multitude of matters raised-his words, not mine. Perhaps officers of emergency services did at various times bring to the attention of their ministers problems which they were worried about and whose resolutions were being blocked. If they did, they are entitled to fairness, to have that actually brought to light, and it is not in the report.

I refer to 16 January, when the executive director of ESB, the chief fire control officer, accompanied by the chief executive of the Department of Justice and Community Safety, briefed cabinet-it is on page 35. No details of the substance of the briefing are given. Then Mr McLeod goes on to say that there is perhaps more than an inference that it conveyed a best case scenario reflecting, as he goes on to say on page 62, the "dogged optimism that the fires would eventually be brought under control".

What the ministers had to say is a matter of conjecture. Nobody knows, and anyway that was at the eleventh hour. Apart from that, Mr McLeod does not report on any other ministerial briefings or advice given. Surely there was some given following the December 2001 fires. Why were those lessons not learnt and why were plans not implemented? Did officials really think that, during the bushfires or in the months and years preceding them, there were no real problems? Were they victims of an older culture of municipal government-perhaps this is the complacency that Mr Stanhope speaks of so often-that was described by a responsible Commonwealth permanent head as "the idea of telling a minister anything strikes them with all the force of novelty"?

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