Page 1072 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 16 March 2005
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MR HARGREAVES: I thank the good Lord for serving these things up to me. I present the facts that pertain to that incident. Before I do, I note that Mr Pratt did not bother to check his facts with anybody. Had he done so, he would have been prevented from making a complete goose of himself.
Fact one: the ESA was alerted to the grass fire at Chisholm by numerous 000 calls from nearby residents. The communications centre received 50-odd 000 calls at the time. Fact two: the Chisholm fire was located in Canberra’s urban area and was responded to by the ACT fire brigade. Fact three: a rural based fire brigade officer also radioed through the fire to comms centre on the old ACT Rural Fire Service VHS radio system—not the trunk radio network used by officers who have become operational.
Fact four: the particular radio channel was not turned off. I repeat: it was not turned off. What part of “not” do you not understand? Fact five: there was no risk to the community at any time, with a highly professional and timely response to the fire. Fact six: as usual, Mr Pratt has acted precipitately and once again he has got it wrong.
Yesterday, or the day before, Mr Pratt put out a press release without checking his facts. He admitted as much. On the 666 breakfast program yesterday morning or the day before he was asked by Ross Solly—and I quote the question; this is a glorious question:
Mr Pratt, as opposition emergency services spokesman, I would assume that you have a line of communication with the people down in emergency services. Have you spoken to them about the incident last week?
Mr Pratt answered:
I have not, because the report came to me very, very late last week.
He did not bother to check the facts. But it was not so late that he did not have time on the Sunday to put out a press release for release on the Monday. Mr Pratt has admitted that he had a report of an incident and, instead of checking it with anyone, he went to the media with a release on Monday morning. He then went on to blame the officers in the communications centre for turning off the radio. This was not the case at all. As I have just explained, no radios were turned off.
It has now been proven that he had his facts wrong. In fact, the United Firefighters Union has asked Mr Pratt to apologise for calling into question the professionalism and efficiency of the officers in the communications centre, based of course on no factual evidence.
Mr Pratt is also alleging some problems between the Rural Fire Service and the fire brigade over who will fight what fire. Which brigade responds to a fire is laid down in the bushfire abatement zone agreement and the UFFU has confirmed that there are no demarcation disputes between the services. I ask Mr Pratt: what were you trying to achieve by publicly accusing our fire services of fighting amongst themselves, instead of congratulating them on an excellent job putting out the fire on Simpson’s Hill?
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