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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3482 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

resources the community sector needs to continue to do the work and bring the community sector into the emergency response plans so that it is fully recognised for the work that it already does.

In terms of the ongoing impact of the bushfires and future contingencies, I do thank the Treasurer for providing a list of the items that the government has already identified that may need to be dealt with in a third appropriation bill, thereby giving us a good lead up to how Treasury and the government are thinking as to areas they have identified and are still working on. Recommendation 5 is quite clear in asking for an interim report specifically on counselling services so that we assess what the long-term impact will be in that regard. Once the Bushfire Recovery Taskforce has wound down and the recovery centre has closed, it will fall on the community sector to continue this work and we do need to know what we are asking it to shoulder.

Looking at the other bushfire-related expenses in this report and the appropriation bill, the committee raised some questions about what the implementation team mentioned in the McLeod report will be doing and how it will be bringing together the whole of the McLeod report and the government response. I was interested to learn that the implementation team will be basically a purchasing team and will not necessarily be looking at a strategic overview or doing a detailed analysis of where we are going with the McLeod report. I do think that needs to be done so that we do have a big picture understanding of what we are building and how it is going to assist us in regard to our emergency services and fire fighting capabilities into the future.

We also examined the implementation of a hazard reduction team that is to sit in the Department of Urban Services and have a whole-of-government approach to how hazard reduction is being done across the different agencies. That is something that needs to be supported. One must question why we have not had one before. How many of these appropriations are going to be in force or ready to go come the new bushfire season was a question that we could not get an answer to. To quote from paragraph 5.5:

Unfortunately, we still have not seen an answer as to what is going to be ready in the short term and what is going to be ready in the long term. I think that that information is necessary so we can have a better picture of how the work that we are doing out of the 2003-04 budget and the supplementary appropriation will be making an impact on the next bushfire season and how we are going about planning for future bushfire seasons. This information is important and I do hope that it will be forthcoming.

The Chief Minister said in the media over the last couple of days, I believe, that we are as ready as can be expected for the next bushfire season. I guess that that is the best that we can do, but we would like to have information about how the new initiatives that have been brought about since the January bushfires are being implemented and acted upon so that we can track how our response is going and whether our response is going the right way.

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