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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1827 ..

MR SMYTH: I am sorry. All right. Well, let’s go to Mr Castle then.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Smyth has the floor.

MR SMYTH: Well, I will jump to the phone call, Mr Speaker. We will go to the Castle call. Let’s compare the information that is in the Canberra Times with what could possibly have been told to the Chief Minister the next morning. The headline is “Bushfires break through”. No alarm. “Bushfires break through”. “Do not be alarmed; it is okay because nobody told me.” But that is the information. The headline is “Bushfires break through”.

It is interesting, though, when you read the minutes, because the minutes have a list of projections that were not given to the Canberra Times. Perhaps somebody opposite could jump to the defence of the ESB and say, “They told the Canberra Times to tell the people of Canberra that.” I want to quote from the minutes of the 6 o’clock meeting. Let’s quote what is there. It says:

Current areas of concern include:

a potential run from McIntyres Fire impacting on Weston Creek to Greenway and potentially west and south Belconnen resulting from a more westerly wind;

a potential run from Tidbinbilla impacting on the Bullen Range and southern parts of Tuggeranong;

I looked through this Canberra Times article and I do not see any of those words. It is interesting that it says potential. You have got to give them credit; it does say potential. But when you go to the McLeod report, at page 38, talking about phase 2—17 and 18 January, Friday, Saturday—it says:

The planning section of the Services Management Team developed detailed predictions of the fire spread—

the government had detailed predictions of the fire spread—

reflecting the progress and impact of the fire; one individual informed the inquiry—

the McLeod inquiry—

that the predictions were accurate to within a few hours.

Information, available on Friday night for briefing to the Canberra Times, was not given, but we are all wrong about this being urgent; apparently we are all wrong. I must live in a parallel universe to the Treasurer.

The third one was the Keady call. Mr Keady is between meetings at this stage. There was an 8 o’clock meeting; there was a 9.30 meeting. But at the 9.30 meeting it was decided to do two things: to set up three evacuation centres that had been identified—Lanyon High School, Hawker College and Phillip College; and they had pet enclosures. Why did they

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