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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1811 ..

The opposition in their arguments have linked this error with more general allegations about mishandling the fires and are basically asserting that this is all a part of a broader cover-up. These are serious allegations and the questions raised are currently the subject of a coroner’s inquest. In my view, a move to have the Assembly cast judgment at this stage would pre-empt and even be disrespectful of the work of the coroner’s inquest.

I have been reminded that the opposition took a quite different approach in government when trying to deal with the tragedy of the implosion. If my memory is correct, there were claims of sub judice when questions were asked and there was a refusal to allow an independent inquiry to run in parallel with the inquest. As far as this Assembly goes, though, in this instance there has been an extra inquiry, the McLeod inquiry, which no-one tried to stop, but this time round the Liberal opposition actually tried to enhance its powers and, as well, have now put up this no-confidence motion.

It is important to judge any serious situation, such as the fire, on its merits. We need to understand the full story and not leap to condemn just because there is an understandable level of hurt and anger in the community. In my view, it is very important to make clear what this no-confidence motion is actually about. It is about a misleading of the Assembly. It is not about how the fires were handled.

The coronial inquest is the place where we will get the facts about the whole sequence of events, not just about one forgotten phone call. Questions about the fires and the responsibilities of people for dealing with them have to be addressed in the context of all the circumstances, including the work of previous years, if they are to lead to useful outcomes.

While much of the heartache at the moment is about the question of what went wrong or what opportunities were missed in the 10 days leading up to 18 January, I do feel that it is important to raise at least briefly some of the history, because this is not the first time that we have had to look very carefully at the threats and realities of bushfires. Any useful analysis has to include the lessons learned from previous inquiries and government responses or lack of them.

I noticed that Brendan Smyth mentioned the 2001 fires and accused the government of not taking notice of lessons learned there. I do not disagree with that, but would point out that the Liberals did not support my motion after the fires to reconsider the land use before replanting pines.

The 1994 McBeth report on the fire hazard reduction practices of the ACT makes salutary reading. McBeth emphasised the fundamental need to engage the community in general, not just the government, specifically emergency services, in order to plan for and mitigate the ravages of bushfires. He found that without significant change to the general approach of the Canberra community and the relevant agencies:

…it is inevitable that significant loss of assets will accrue together with loss of life during the next single, multiple or conflagration fire event. The urban rural interface will obviously bear the brunt of such losses…It is not if such a disaster will occur but when.

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