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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4703 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

fiddle with operational priorities. JACS would not impede the operational requirements of any of those authorities.

This bill gives morale back to all of the emergency services in the ACT through the provision of operational autonomy. Interoperability would not suffer from the segregation of the existing emergency services. As occurs with the Defence Force services, these three authorities would come together for regular training exercises, particularly in communications, operational procedures and emergency responsiveness.

In organisational and infrastructure terms, we will have a lot more to say later about the development of an organisational layout which would deeply enhance interoperability without stifling individual service independence. It is very important that each of the agencies be allowed to get on and do their own training. The centralisation of training as we see it now is, in fact, impeding training, particularly in the urban fire brigades, and we want to remove that impediment.

Mr Speaker, this bill is an example of the Liberal opposition's initiative. It is an example of the force of community consultation and satisfaction that drive the Liberal opposition. The Liberal opposition did not go off and hire a person to lead an authority that does not yet exist, that has not been passed by the Assembly, and that has not incorporated community feedback. We recognise the expertise and we respect the experience of Major General Peter Dunn, and our comments today in this debate are about the sequence of events that we think should have been undertaken in respect of rebuilding. We do not reflect on Major General Peter Dunn and we recognise that he is a very worthy man to be considered for a senior emergency management role in the ACT.

The Liberal opposition believes that this issue needs to be resolved as quickly as possible, which is why we have brought on debate today. The round table that Ms Tucker suggested and that we agreed to has seen endless delays and a lack of attention from Ms Tucker, I must say with all due respect, which has brought us to debate this bill now. The bushfire season is upon us.

The Liberal opposition can rest easy that this bill has seen much consultation and that the end result is what the ACT community needs and wants in the area of emergency services. The government intends to have more of the same. We want to push things along. It is scurrilous that the government has taken nine months to begin to make any changes at all, and doubly scurrilous given that we are just about into the next bushfire season and the ACT is still inside one of the worst weather cycles experienced in living memory.

It looks as if bureaucratic procedure and administrative niceties will continue to govern the government's progress on this reform issue. We do not see an air of urgency with this government on what we believe is a life and death matter, the protection of the ACT. That is why the opposition, not waiting for the McLeod inquiry to produce its report, commenced consulting in late summer 2003. It drew on the lessons of bushfire 2001 and it took note of the May 2003 audit report into the "dysfunctional"ESB, as reported in that document, and has designed reforms for the ACT's emergency capability.

Mr Speaker, the many experienced men and women from the field level up to the tactical command level-our police, our urban firemen and firewomen, our other emergency

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