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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2351 ..

The objectives of the bill recognise that protection of our natural environment is one of the aims for emergency services. The objectives flow through to the planning bodies, the Bushfire Council, which has the function of advising the authority and the minister on matters relating to bush fires. It includes a person to represent the community’s interest in the environment. The government will be moving an amendment to this that flows from discussions I’ve had with Mr Dunn and formed by people with relevant experience of the community. I will speak in more detail on this in the detail stage.

The authority must consult with the council in preparation of the strategic bushfire management plan. The membership of the council is composed, at clause 129, of people with particular skills and contacts or viewpoints to represent, and the minister “must try to ensure” that people to fill these roles are appointed. I understand the reasons for this set-up and believe that the language is strong enough and that it’s only in the case that there is genuinely no-one suitable that the minister would not fill the vacancies.

The council is intended to work by considering proposals, each member in consultation with their constituencies. The wording of, for example, the person to represent the interest of the community is important. It is a responsibility to consider how the community will be best served by whatever is before the council. This, in my view, is a much better expression of a community representative than we often see.

The emergency management committee similarly includes, in addition to the heads of the relevant services, a person to represent the community’s interests; a person to represent environmental interests, including conservation; and a specialist in recovery from emergencies.

I think I’ll leave it there and go into it more in the detail stage later. But I would like to thank everyone concerned again, including members of the community and the services, for working to develop a much better system.

MS DUNDAS (5.57): The ACT Democrats will be supporting the Emergencies Bill 2004. As we have discussed many times in this Assembly, the emergency response leading up to and during the 2003 bushfires had a number of shortcomings. Some of these have been identified by the McLeod inquiry, and other reports have investigated these fires. The coronial inquiry will expose many more issues when its investigation comes to a conclusion.

Needless to say, since the aftermath of the bushfires there have been numerous calls for reform, especially of emergency services in the ACT, so that the courageous men and women who put their lives on the line during emergencies can receive the support they need from the management and administrative structures into the future and that our resources are utilised in the best possible way when we are dealing with emergency situations.

So this bill creates a new managerial authority for emergency services in the territory that will report directly to the responsible minister and retains separate units for the four distinct services but combines them into a single management structure headed by the Emergency Services Commissioner. This will allow greater cooperation, interoperability

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