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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4249 ..

Minister did not ask; the Chief Minister did not exercise an inquiring mind. Other ministers did not exercise an inquiring mind; yet you had the authority to go and talk to your officers at the ESB about what the hell was going on. You failed to do that.

I finish by saying that the people on that side of the chamber failed in their duties; they did not go and determine what the facts were. Despite the amount of fire and weather intelligence available from 16 January, they did not go and find out; they did not question; they did not exercise the inquiring mind; they did not warn the community. They should have been able to warn the community, to allow the community to prepare for the period around 18 January, and they did not.

The Chief Minister failed in his duty of care. The Chief Minister has failed to come clean on where he was and what he was doing. The Chief Minister needs to come clean and tell us about those phone calls, what he was doing on the evening of the 17th, and what his actions were on the 18th. But he has not got the bottle.

Question put:

That the motion be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Water and Sewerage Amendment Bill 2004

Debate resumed from 30 June 2004, on motion by Mrs Dunne:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (11.29): The government supports this bill’s underlying objectives of water conservation and reducing nutrient loads into waste water streams but, unfortunately, the bill contains a lot of flaws. It contains so many flaws that these proposed provisions are unworkable and therefore unsupportable as drafted. However, the government will not be opposing the bill. It will, instead, support it in principle and move a range of amendments to address the bill’s fundamental problems.

I understand Mrs Dunne will also be proposing a range of amendments today to address some of the detail of the bill’s flaws but, regrettably, they fail to adequately address the more fundamental problems of the bill. The government supports clauses 1 to 3 of the bill but opposes the remainder of the bill, and intends moving proposed amendments in

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