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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1794 ..

a number of Canberrans. My first reaction was to dismiss this suggestion as entirely subjective opinion, given that I clearly recall that, following the rescue, Mr Stanhope appeared buoyant and obviously delighted as he bathed in the very positive publicity and support he received from the people of the Canberra community as the rescue incident remained glowingly publicised. Does this apparent specialist medical expertise suggest that such buoyancy of spirit and pleasure in the post-rescue publicity are really typical symptoms of a trauma suffered by someone who has helped to save someone’s life? I must say I find that hard to swallow. It looks more like a justification plucked out of thin air than an objective judgement.

If this theory of post-rescue trauma is put forward to try to justify the lapses of the acting emergency services minister, Mr Stanhope, can it also be used to explain the state of mind that seems to have coincidentally and concurrently afflicted Mr Keady? Is it possible that this “trauma” was contagious and that Mr Keady caught it from Mr Stanhope, despite the apparently infrequent contact between them? Should further expert opinion be sought on this likelihood? Seriously, with SARS and other new diseases popping up around the world we cannot be too careful and, if there is something out there, we need to quickly identify and control it before we are confronted with an amnesia epidemic. Given the high incidence of memory loss during the inquiries into the fires, maybe this insidious disease has already spread undetected through the ranks of those involved in emergency operations in January 2003. But maybe this opinion could be right, so we should get cracking quickly to pin it down and find a way to treat it!

From the Canberra Times of last Wednesday the 5th, I found that the theme of the meeting at the Emergency Services Bureau early on the morning of 18 January was “Preparedness for Evacuation”. And I learnt from the Canberra Times of Friday the 7th that this meeting “was told the McIntyre’s Hut fire could be in Canberra by the late afternoon”. I also learnt that the meeting was “standing room only”, so I guess it carried a sense of urgency. The 8 May edition of the paper records Mr Keady as saying that on 18 January he “did not attend an 8 am briefing at the ESB about preparations for evacuations”.

Why, as reported on 5 May last week, did he say that, while he could not remember the call or what it was about, he “did not believe the call was about anything urgent or else Mr Stanhope would have come straight to the ESB”? He added that “the (two) morning phone calls would not be about the need for a state of emergency” because that issue “didn’t arise until later in the day”.

And why, to the coroner a few days later, did he say that, while he could not remember the 10.09 am phone call on 18 January or what it was about, it was inevitably about the bushfire emergency? Would not that have prompted even a vaguely involved Chief Minister/acting minister for emergency services to get over there quick smart to satisfy himself about the true state of affairs? Wouldn’t it?

Why is it that I see a clear element of contradiction between these two statements—statements that were made only a few days apart? Why is it that I feel uneasy about the apparently unravelling threads of this changing testimony around and about the matters of urgency and non-urgency and of just popping in to the ESB of one’s own volition as opposed to responding to advice that things were getting serious? Does this apparent contradiction mean that Mr Keady’s memory is deteriorating at an alarming rate, or is in

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