Page 2030 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
were the legacy of Brendan Smyth, when he was Minister for Emergency Services, and his predecessors—seven long years of neglect which this government has redressed.
Funding to the ACT Emergency Services Authority has been massively boosted: a 46 per cent increase in three years; a budget now going well over $50 million. That is this government’s legacy, and it is a proud one, when it comes to investing and improving emergency services in this territory. So I will not hear a word of criticism of this government’s commitment to improving our emergency services capacity. We have a strong record. It is those opposite who have a record of neglect and complete ignoring of what our emergency services needed.
These changes free up our commissioner to focus on those operational elements where his or her skills are most desperately needed: to co-ordinate the activities of the four services, to keep them talking to each other, working with each other and training with each other so that they are in the best possible position to respond to any emergency that our city may face into the future.
These changes ensure that with a budget of the size we are now facing with emergency services, it is brought closer to government so that closer attention can be paid to day-to-day financial management, day-to-day administrative operations, which are separate from the operational capacity of our emergency services. That is what these changes do. They are sensible, they are considered and they respect the operational independence and integrity of our chief officers, our commissioner and our four emergency services.
The government can make a very clear and unequivocal commitment. From a volunteer’s perspective or from a paid officer’s perspective, they will see no change on the ground. When they do their work, when they do their training, when they do their community services they will see no change on the ground but they will see a continued commitment from this government to investing in emergency services to protect our city and to protect our community.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (10.39): I will just take a couple of minutes of my second 10 minutes. Mr Corbell stood up and said that this was all entirely the result of a seven-year legacy left by the previous government. Let me tell you about what happened. We just heard the minister sheet home entirely the blame to the previous government for emergency services as they then existed after the change of government in 2001. We see a government here which failed to read the drought index in 2002.
It is at least a joint responsibility. It is something that you cannot entirely sheet home to the existing emergency services at that time. Yes, they were not equipped, they were bureaucratic, they were dysfunctional and they were not well organised. But the drought index developing in 2002 really raised the stakes significantly higher than they had been prior to 2002. If you had read the entrails of the December 2001 bushfire, properly analysed the bushfire threat in 2002 on the back of that fire and coupled that with the drought index, you might have been in a better position to manage the emergency circumstances facing this community.
You failed in those duties as well. You failed also to read where the threat was emerging between 10 and 17 January 2003, and finally you, as well as the then dysfunctional ESB and perhaps some other elements of the services, failed to warn the community of the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .