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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2359 ..

But there were some real problems too regarding just literally a sensible chain of command and a sensible delegation of people on the spot to ensure that if a situation arises which needs an immediate response, an immediate decision and a quick decision, that actually can be done. That’s certainly something any good structure needs and it is certainly something that I was taught to do in the Australian Army. Anyone who has had anything to do with the services would know that it is absolutely essential to have faith in subordinates, to have faith in the people there on the ground to ensure that they actually can respond.

If that had happened we might actually have been saved a number of deaths and certainly the property destruction of the past from fires. I can think of other measures too. I can recall the Canberra floods back in 1971. That was an emergency. Seven people drowned in this flash flood that came streaming down through Woden. I think it was very close to my birthday; I was just turning 19; I was drinking at the Wello. A couple of my mates were going to go back to Woden actually. I suggested they probably should not that night; it was absolutely pouring rain.

I also remember a very young constable, a good friend of mine, Sergeant Geoff Brown, who took matters into hand and commandeered the help of a few people—and I think he might have been assisted by several other police. He actually went into the raging torrents streaming down through Woden in the stormwater drains there and saved the lives of about six or seven people.

I can remember the fairly quick decisions made by a Sergeant Bob Burridge, whom I had the honour of serving with in the reserve when he was Captain Burridge, who similarly saved several people and won the Queen’s Medal for bravery, as I think did Geoff Brown, for the 1976 floods in Queanbeyan. It was not an ACT situation but, again, it was an instance of a man on the spot making a quick decision and acting without any interference from above which actually saved lives. So I am pleased to see that there is a reasonable structure in place for this in this particular bill. I think it is certainly overdue that we have a bill like this.

Coming back to fires: one thing I think that this new act will enable better than it has in the past is for groups such as this, bodies such as this, to have a say in ensuring that preventative measures are taken. For too long, for too many years, we shut up our national parks; we allowed trails to be overgrown; we probably paid far too much attention to the so-called environmental aspects rather than the preventative aspects, the ability of the emergency services people to do their job to ensure that they were able to get to these trouble spots and that they in fact did have the power to do that.

I note, in the briefing we received, there is still room for conservation experts, et cetera, to be involved. I adopt a word of caution. I would not let them perhaps necessarily get too involved. I think we have—I was going to say “been badly burnt”—seen some significant problems regarding work that should have been done, which could have prevented this and which would have made it easier for our emergency services to respond to get out there in the mountains, out there in the fire trails. It did not happen, and I certainly hope a structure like this is going to assist there. But I think we need to be ever vigilant there.

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