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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1773 ..

I am more than happy to ask the Emergency Services Bureau for a chronology of the fire’s progress on that day.

I had to come back and ask him whether he would give me a chronology. I had to come back and ask him a couple of times. I came back and said that I had an overdue question and was told that responses had been signed off. I had to ask again and was ultimately told that the McLeod inquiry would deal with the subject of the chronology. There is no chronology in the report of the McLeod inquiry. There is a day-by-day summary, but there are no times. The report of the McLeod inquiry is devoid of times as to what burned when, and that is so essential as to who knew what. That is why that was misleading.

We had the assertion that the McLeod inquiry would uncover all. Mr Stanhope said:

It is the government’s intention that the inquiry to be undertaken by Mr McLeod be complete, be inclusive and involve public participation.

He said that it would review or inquire “into all aspects of the Emergency Services Bureau’s response and all issues around the fire”. Mr Speaker, I consider that to be a misleading statement, because the McLeod inquiry did not and the minister responsible did not ensure that that would happen. That was a breach of ministerial responsibility and it was misleading.

Mr Speaker, this morning we had the revelation on radio station 2CC that Mr Stanhope was seen on Red Hill at approximately 6.00 pm on Friday, 17 January. I am sure that the Chief Minister will clear that up or verify it. We have had a number of phone calls, the radio station has had a number of phone calls and I know that at least one other member of this place has had phone calls from people saying that he was seen with ESB officials on Red Hill observing the fires that night. The Chief Minister might like to clarify whether that happened.

We then get to the statements that the Chief Minister never spoke to anyone and that nobody called him or, if they did, the matters were trivial. Mr Keady revealed last week in the coronial inquiry that when Mr Stanhope rang him on Monday of last week to ask whether he had made a phone call he could not recall either. However, Mr Keady did advise the Chief Minister the day before he told this place that the phone call would not have been trivial; there would have been important matters that caused him to ring at 9 o’clock on a Saturday, remembering that Mr Keady is sitting between two meetings at this stage when he tries to make the call and, when he speaks to the Chief Minister, he comes out of a meeting.

Mr Keady did not speak of trivial things, as the Chief Minister asserts. Mr Keady spoke of serious things, of serious issues, to make sure that the Chief Minister knew what was happening. One of those issues was about the need to set up evacuation centres. Who believes that the ACT public service, as good as they are and as responsible as they are, took it upon their own shoulders to set up three evacuation centres in the ACT without informing a minister? The Chief Minister’s assertion that the calls were trivial is nonsense.

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