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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1768 ..

Mr Speaker, the minutes of those meetings are available. The minutes of those meetings actually show exactly what was being discussed and the minutes of those meetings actually show, if I can find them, the sorts of things that both Mike Castle and Tim Keady were being told at the time. The meeting of the 17th at ESB started at 6 o’clock. The minutes tell us that evacuation of the forward post at Bulls Head was to occur. The meeting was told that the expectation was that the fire would reach the Cotter the next day at about 12 o’clock, Uriarra at about 4 o’clock and Stromlo and Duffy at about 8 o’clock. Mr Castle would have been aware of that. When he rang the Chief Minister, that is what he would have told him.

The next day there were two meetings. Mr Keady is reported by some sources to have been at both of them and only at one by others. (Extension of time granted.) When the Chief Minister rang back the next morning at 10.09 am he would have got Mr Keady in the meeting that was discussing the setting up of evacuation centres and the fact that the Red Cross had been asked to set up its national information service—the 1800 number that people are directed to use to inquire about missing or potentially dead loved ones. They talked about setting up evacuation centres with pet enclosures and they talked about Lifeline setting up scripts to work with Canberra Connect so that the public could be informed.

That meeting was also told of a potential run from McIntyres Hut impacting on Weston Creek to Greenway and potentially west and south Belconnen resulting from a more westerly wind; that meeting was told of a potential run from Tidbinbilla impacting on the Bullen Range and the southern part of Tuggeranong; and that meeting was told of the potential threat of the Stockyard fire moving towards Williamsdale. That was what Mr Keady was hearing or had just heard when the Chief Minister called him back. The Chief Minister’s defence is, “I cannot recall. It must have been trivial.” Mr Keady has discounted that. It was not trivial. I seek leave to table the minutes of those two meetings, Mr Speaker.

Leave granted.

MR SMYTH: I table the following documents:

January 2003 bushfire operations—Planning meetings—Minutes—

17 January 2003 at 1800

18 January 2003 at 0930

Mr Speaker, all of that has been denied for over a year. Mr Stanhope tells us, and it should appal us, that he had drifted for nearly a day in a fog of unknowing. Then he tried to claim that he went to the headquarters of his own initiative. Of all his statements, that boast now sounds the most hollow of all.

All morning on the 18th the police pleaded for the public to be warned and for a formal state of emergency to be declared to allow for the vital and dramatic increase in official coordination of action. Some time after one o’clock, Mr Stanhope was in the meeting that took place at the emergency services headquarters at Curtin. By around 2.30 pm the police arguments finally prevailed and Mr Stanhope relieved himself of any further demands of leadership and passed the task to the more able hands of the Chief Police

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