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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2363 ..

control. This situation, I believe, can occur before we have reached that state of alert where you would more normally see perhaps a multi-service deployment or a joint service deployment.

It is very important that the fine line between the chief officers of the services operating independently and the time at which the authority steps in to exercise control are delineated, otherwise we may have the independence and the delegations of those chief officers destroyed or at least deteriorated or, at the other end of the spectrum, we may have the situation of the authority not stepping up to coordinate and control when necessary.

Section 9 (4) (a) clearly states that the function of the authority is “to seek to give the emergency services a strong, cohesive, strategic and operational direction”. That is an excellent instrument within the act, but I would like to see a statement made here describing the circumstances in which the authority might step in to help coordinate joint service activities. That is the purpose of the amendment.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, and Minister for Arts and Heritage) (8.13): As I do not think the amendment is necessary, we will not be supporting it. I do not think it adds any clarity to the bill; in fact, I think it will build uncertainty into the relationship between the authority and the chief officers.

Currently under the bill the authority is responsible for the overall strategic direction and management of the emergency services. This means that, for small incidents, the authority will monitor and coordinate support operations in support of the relevant chief officer. For large incidents the authority can take a larger role.

The amendment also introduces a new concept of “initial response”, and that is not defined. The bill also provides specifically for the issuing of authority guidelines that can further enunciate the relationship of the authority and the chief officer for major emergencies if deemed necessary. In those circumstances, the amendment is simply not needed and would not really help in understanding the situation at such a time. We will be opposing the amendment.

MS TUCKER (8.14): The Greens will not be supporting this amendment either. The argument against this amendment is similar to what I will be saying about a number of Mr Pratt’s amendments today—that the amendment seeks to add extra detail and, by doing that, risks undermining the effectiveness of the bill and the system it has enshrined.

As I described in the in principle stage, this bill operates by setting broad results based responsibilities and carefully crafting the involvement of all relevant parties. Mr Pratt’s amendments are problematic because they are overprescribing a responsibility. It is already clear in sections 12, 9 (4) (h), 9 (4) (j) and 19 that the emergency management authority has overall responsibility for the effective functioning of the services. This amendment, apart from picking up only one aspect of that responsibility, introduces the new term “initial response”. I would be very cautious about that at this late stage. As long as we have this structure of the bill and it works, we do not need that detail. In fact, that level of detail could undermine the bill.

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