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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2949 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

I am reported to regularly on every aspect of the recovery. All departments report to cabinet weekly on their response to issues around the bushfire. All members of cabinet receive a weekly cabinet brief on all aspects of this recovery. I am happy to make available the plans we have for the future. They are detailed, they are strategic, they are constructive and they have been funded.

The motion also calls on the government to provide suitable recognition to volunteers, emergency services personnel and community groups. We did that through Canberra Day this year in our determination to ensure that they were recognised. I have applauded the volunteers from day one. I have defended them against outrageous allegations that in some way it was our firefighters that failed us on the day of the fire. I supported them strenuously and strongly at that time and continue to do so, and I will continue to do so forever. Surely nobody is suggesting that I have not supported our volunteers or our firefighters in the most forthright and rigorous way.

In addition, I have provided 2,500 certificates of recognition to people nominated to me following extensive public calls for nominations for people to receive them. I received 2,500 nominations from the public and from organisations for me to recognise individuals through a signed certificate of recognition on behalf of the ACT government of their efforts in the fire: 2,500 people responded to that detailed public call for nominations and the government's response was to personally recognise through a certificate signed by me 2,500 Canberrans, the very people that are the subject of this particular dot point.

I anticipate, without pre-empting it, that in the next round of Australian honours and in the next round of nominations for public service medals our existing honours arrangements will recognise people involved in the fire. That is a matter for all Canberrans to respond to. Those nominations are not necessarily made by government. They can be supported by government, but those are responses which I have no doubt the community will make. Already I am receiving requests to provide supporting information in relation to applications for honours and awards for people involved in our response to the fire.

Paragraphs (5), (6) and (7) really are derisory. I will not pursue this too fully now; I am out of time in any event. But to seek to censure this government in relation to purported failings in regard to this fire-a fire started by lightning strike in the midst of the worst summer on record, a fire that simply enveloped us, that overran us, and with the benefit of hindsight we can make some judgments about decisions that were or were not taken, to some extent harsh decisions-is to seek to rewrite history. That is what this motion is attempting to do.

This motion is a blatant attempt for political purposes-shallow political purposes, too-to rewrite the events of that day and the events leading up to that day. The bushfire was a major disaster. That fire came down out of those mountains, as I said yesterday, like the wolf on the fold, in a way that we had never experienced.

Matt O'Brien, a helicopter pilot employed by the Emergency Services Bureau, reported in his submission to the New South Wales coroner having been sent to inspect the fire at 1.30 pm on the Saturday and reporting back to the Emergency Services Bureau that it had not broken into the pine forest and he could not see

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