Page 3358 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 2005

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been put in place in the ACT, will be the decision of the particular expert incident manager appointed to this particular incident. We now await those directions before evacuating. We do it through a system of alarms. That is the procedure that will apply throughout the ACT in relation to incidents that might or might not involve a terrorist attack.

MR STEFANIAK: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Chief Minister, how can you ensure that, during a future emergency, the surrounding buildings are actually checked to see if there are occupants there to ensure that any emergency evacuation is managed properly?

MR STANHOPE: These, of course, are issues around our state of preparation, our planning and the extent to which individual building managers take seriously their responsibility for the protocols and procedures in relation to the evacuation of their buildings. We can use this particular building as an example. Each of us in this place knows we have an evacuation plan, procedures and protocols. They are made available to each of us. Each of us has a personal responsibility to ourselves, and indeed those of us that are employers, to our staff, to ensure that those arrangements are understood.

We have in place in this building a set of procedures and protocols in relation to evacuation. It is the responsibility of everybody in this building, including our building managers, to ensure that each of us takes those seriously and complies with them, and that all of the processes that constitute the evacuation plan and procedures for this building are obeyed implicitly and not treated sneeringly.

Schools—Ginninderra

MRS DUNNE: My question is to the Chief Minister in his capacity as Acting Minister for Education and Training. Chief Minister, on 24 August the minister for education, Ms Gallagher, responded positively to a request from the Parents & Friends of Ginninderra district high school that Ginninderra district high school not be considered closed until 20 January 2006 and, further, that no item of furniture or paper or whatnot be removed or disposed of before then. Since that meeting, we have been told that there have been at least two collections of furniture from the school, the latest being last Thursday during school hours. Chief Minister, why was the furniture removed from Ginninderra district high school against the wishes of the P&F and despite the undertakings of the minister?

MR STANHOPE: I am not aware of removal of furniture vital to the continued conduct of Ginninderra district high school for the cohort of students that constitute the school community at Ginninderra high school. It may have been. I have no advice on this, and I am more than happy to take advice from the department on the specifics of the assertion that has been made.

The department of education and the ACT government take very seriously the educational needs of all the students at Ginninderra district high school. We will not do anything to jeopardise the capacity of the department of education and the staff at Ginninderra district high school to continue to provide the full range of educational services and support to the students at Ginninderra district high school now or at any time.


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