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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3023 ..

MRS CROSS (continuing):

AFP had information as early as 9.00 am that a state of emergency should be advised to residents.

Chief Minister, as the elected leader of the ACT community, why did you not declare a state of emergency earlier?

MR STANHOPE: That is an interesting question. Why don't I declare one today? To what end was I to declare a state of emergency? What was it designed to achieve?

Mrs Cross: To save lives.

MR STANHOPE: No, that is not what it was designed-

MR SPEAKER: Order, members! The Chief Minister has the floor.

MR STANHOPE: I think that we need to have some explanation in relation to that. I think we need to look at what it is that the act actually requires and what it seeks to achieve. As I have explained before in relation to this issue, the suggestion is that there would be some advantage in declaring a state of emergency, something that has never been done before in the ACT and is rarely done in other jurisdictions. For instance, no state of emergency has been declared in New South Wales in relation to any bushfire event in that state in its history, as far as I am aware.

We need to look at this matter in some context. We need to look at it in terms of the legislative impact and what we would seek to achieve by the declaration of a state of emergency. Why do it in the first place? Why, in the face of the very significant fires that New South Wales has faced from time to time, have states of emergency not been declared there? What is it that we seek to achieve and what is it that was sought to be achieved through the declaration of a state of emergency?

Essentially, the advice that I received, which was not put to me until after 2.00 pm on Saturday, the 18th, was that there may be circumstances-and it was advice essentially being proffered by the ACT police-where some people would flatly refuse to leave their residences, even in the face of the firestorm that we experienced. It was the view of the ACT police at the time that in circumstances where a resident whose house was facing the firestorm, for whatever reason, refused absolutely and obdurately to evacuate, the police might need additional powers over and above those which they in any event possessed, essentially, to arrest those people, to take them into custody and to move them under duress out of their homes.

That was the issue that was discussed and that was the issue at the heart of the advice that I took and acted on. It was that in circumstances where people simply point-blank refused police advice, emergency services personnel advice or Rural Fire Service advice that their lives were potentially at risk, that they were in danger of their houses burning and their being trapped and dying, the police should have the capacity to make the decision on their behalf and forcibly remove them from their homes.

That was the advice I received and that was the basis on which I made the decision. I refer all members-I referred to this on Tuesday-to the McLeod report discussion on this issue. It is one of the issues that we will look at in a long and hard way in our review

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