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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2941 ..

MRS BURKE (continuing):

and with authority over us, to do the job that they are called, paid and elected to do. I do not think that at that time the government advised the community otherwise. The government gave them no reason to believe that things were not well, whereas we know now that things were not good.

I was so pleased to see the McLeod report bring down some very sensible suggestions. There are many gaps; things still have not been answered in full. There is a process-I think Ms Tucker spoke of this-that humanity works through and we are only at probably the third level of working through all this. It is not about digging up the past, pointing fingers and so on, but we need to be sure in our minds that everything is revealed and out in the open. I am sure that that is what the Chief Minister wants; they were his own words.

I am pleased that the government has agreed to recommendation 33 of the McLeod report regarding rural pumpers. That is a tremendous recommendation. It certainly will help in the future. I met with some residents of Uriarra last evening, I was out there with them, and, as an example of the resilience of the community, one guy said to me, "Jacqui, we managed to save our old school using ice cream containers. Just think what we could do with more support, resources and equipment."We may smile at that, but that was the reality those people were faced with.

Recommendation 40 is, of course, now like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. It talks about initiatives such as a fire guard and other forms of direct community support that should be introduced to help encourage self-help arrangements in the community. I welcome the government's response and I look forward sincerely to their actions: actions do speak louder than words.

The Labor Party keep scoffing at the opposition because, it would seem, we are saying things that they do not like to hear, which is rather sad. We have a situation in which the whole of government must grapple with this issue and work through it. As Ms Tucker alluded to, we are working through it and there has been good progress. Hindsight is a great gift. We can all be wise after the event, or can we? It would seem not. Whilst this government did not learn from the bushfires of 2001, I truly hope that it most certainly has now learned from the tragic events of 2003.

Mr Speaker, I also thought about what is a government's role. I have done a lot of soul-searching, as I am sure has everyone else in this place, no less than the Chief Minister himself. What is a government's role? It is to lead, to create a good, safe and secure environment for us to live in, to give us the infrastructure for that to happen, to reassure the community in times of emergency. Those are just some of the things I thought about.

Did our current government fulfil some of these things? I am sure they did so and did some of them well. But there are holes, there are gaps. When somebody owns up to something, there has to be a following through of that action, however extremely distasteful and hard that may be. We have seen that happen before in this place with people in leadership. As the events unfold, and they will, we will all find out, we will know. This is not about convincing people one way or another. People need to hear the facts to make up their minds so that they are enabled then to make an informed decision about things.

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