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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3477 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

From talking to fire officers, I know that they are lamenting the fact that they are losing their old Mercedes units, which have been fabulous units. I am sure that some of the volunteer units will be looking forward to getting their hands on them. The fire officers said that it is really appropriate on some days to send two members of the brigade in a light unit to put out a small grass fire, but they will now have to send a fully crewed urban fringe tanker with far more capacity.

Currently, they can send a light unit to one fire and a tanker to a different fire, but they will lose that capability. If on days like yesterday, which was extremely windy and got quite hot in the afternoon, no volunteer units stood up, the Fire Brigade units would go first. My concern is that they have lost that flexibility. There is also the issue that they have lost litreage. The Fire Brigade had something like 20,000 litres through the nine units that they have. Under the new arrangements, they will have something like 13,000 litres. To that is added a compressed foam capability, which takes the relativity from about 100,000 litres of foam down to 65,000 litres of foam. I think that the loss of flexibility in the Fire Brigade and the loss of litre capacity in the Fire Brigade, which is always on duty, is something that needs to be reconsidered. Nowhere can I find reference in the report to McLeod saying that those units should be taken from the ACT Fire Brigade, so it is a question of the implementation of what McLeod has said.

Mr Speaker, I shall move on. I am sure that other members will canvass some of the other issues discussed. Some money is to be appropriated for the acquisition of land in the Majura Valley, particularly around the airport. We have some concerns that the government has put forward a figure. There is a dilemma here. They need money to purchase land, but they have flagged their intent, saying that they now believe the land to be worth, I think, $1.059 million. If it comes in at more than that, they will be back here for more money, I suggest. But they have also flagged their value to the Commonwealth. It is an ACT government valuation and I am not sure that Defence will agree with it. I suspect, given the way that things are negotiated, Defence will be looking at that figure and saying, "If they want all that land, we may want to get a little bit more money than that for it."

I suspect that the acquisition of the Hotel Kurrajong is something that the Assembly will watch with a great deal of interest. The Treasurer has sought $350,000 to purchase the building. What we will do with that building from this point in time will be interesting. We do have a lease. One of the recommendations is that the Treasurer report back at the earliest possible opportunity on the progress of the negotiations on the Kurrajong Hotel and the Majura Valley land.

Some community groups appeared before the committee. Both ACTCOSS and FaBRiC-Family Based Respite Care Inc-raised concerns about the impact of the bushfires on the community sector and the lack of financial recognition of that and, particularly in FaBRiC's case, although ACTCOSS also mentioned it, the ongoing battle with governments, and they said successive governments, about some things that all members of the Assembly need to take on board. For instance, the community groups looked at this bill and saw that EBAs had been negotiated with a number of public service bodies and they got pay increases as a matter of course, but the community sector has to come cap in hand to government for the full flow-on effect of increases under the

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