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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2352 ..

and co-ordination between the services, allowing a more cohesive emergency response in the future.

The form and responsibilities of the new management structure have been subject to extensive consultation with stakeholders, and my understanding is that the new structure results from a broad consensus on most issues. I think the process, in terms of extensive consultation and bringing this legislation together and working with all parties, has been extremely admirable and the hard work of Peter Dunn and his assisting officers should be recognised by this Assembly.

This bill departs somewhat from the models proposed in the McLeod report, and I believe this is a sensible departure as detailed discussions with stakeholder groups revealed that there were major concerns in relation to what McLeod was proposing. I’m glad that the government has retreated from its previous stance on implementing all of the McLeod suggestions in full. I believe the government was too hasty to be seen to be doing something rather than actually ensuring that the best was being done as they rushed to accept McLeod; so I’m glad that we’ve moved away from that rush to be seen to be doing something and are now actually doing something sensible.

The intention of the McLeod recommendations was to ensure a closer working relationship between emergency services, but it did that by taking away their uniqueness and devaluing their individual skills; so the structure proposed by the bill before us actually allows greater cooperation between the fire services and all services whilst retaining their distinct identities. We are addressing the concerns that have been raised by McLeod, but there is a different solution before us.

The bill departs from a board structure and puts in place a single Emergency Services Commissioner who is responsible for the operation of the authority. The four emergency services retain separate units within that authority, each having a chief officer who will be responsible for that particular service. The bill specifically requires certain qualifications for the chief officers of those services so that we can be sure the management of the services actually do have on-the-ground experience in dealing with emergencies and would be aware of the actual challenges throughout the system and the challenges of doing the on-the-ground work.

A particular feature of this bill that I am delighted to see is the statutory responsibility for community education and accident prevention programs within each of the emergency services units, with an overarching co-ordination of this to be managed by the authority. The bushfires have alerted us to the fact that our communal knowledge of emergency procedures was inadequate, and this new statutory role will help enhance the awareness of emergency measures throughout the territory. I think this is particularly important because we have in this debate focused on the emergency that surrounded the bushfires of January 2003 and there has been some discussion about the need to have the community prepared for the next bushfire season.

It is the nature of emergencies—that they can happen at any time and can take any form—and we need to be, I think, raising community awareness about the diversity of emergencies that can strike the ACT at any time. I think that the community has become more aware of the dangers associated with bushfires and there has been a greater focus on making sure that our town is bushfire ready, but there are other situations that we

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