Page 2778 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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to re-establish the benchmark of 108,000 RBTs per annum. This is truly a community policing presence, yet in this budget we do not see how the government can ensure that this level of testing is resourced to that level. Minister Hargreaves, the previous police minister, seems to have allowed the number of RBTs to run down dramatically.
The government also has its head in the sand over the extent of the drug-driving problem. When questioned about this issue in estimates hearings the minister did not give an indication that he was committed to introducing RDT at all. While CPO Fagan said that she would look at it possibly in the future, the police clearly do not have the full support of the government in introducing a random roadside drug-testing regime. Across the country, in every jurisdiction, governments are finding that a very significant number of drivers involved in fatal crashes have been drug affected. The evidence is there. Most state governments are either now trialling or moving to a formal program, but the ACT government refuses to do anything about that.
I move on to the Emergency Services Authority. I have said before that the transfer of the Emergency Services Authority to the department of JACS is a complete travesty. This goes completely against commonsense and completely against the spirit of the McLeod inquiry and the Auditor-General’s recommendations of May 2003. This government spent millions of dollars establishing the ESA as a separate agency and is now going to throw all that investment away by transferring the ESA back into a public service management arrangement.
The minister has said in estimates that he believes that its operational independence is guaranteed. I do not see how he has been able to demonstrate that in estimates, but we will take him at face value and will watch very closely and monitor that the ESA is going to be as operationally responsible as the way McLeod recommended that it should be. If that independence is degraded by the fact that it is moving back in under JACS, minister, we will come back to you and very strongly recommend that you restore its independence.
On community fire units, the government failed in 2006-07 to provide urgent funding for programs such as the stalled community fire units program. While there is some funding in this budget for front-line equipment, there certainly is a huge lack of commitment on what is really needed to ensure that the ESA is able to function to full capacity without bureaucratic hindrance. We believe that 80 community fire units are needed along the ACT urban edge or the frontier, if you like, but we only have 28 in place.
On communications capabilities and programs, we have seen in the Treasurer’s Advance again, for a second consecutive year, about $5 million to pay for delayed and blown-out programs and budgets generally. The minister, during estimates hearings, could not give a proper explanation of what the advance was for. The overriding concern is that major communications programs, to which some $26-odd million was appropriated in previous budgets, are two or more years late in being completely introduced to service and signed off on.
I am speaking about the digital data communications program, Firelink, and the primary radio net program, TRN. We have seen Firelink blow its budget by 25 per cent, and we now know that it is two years beyond introduction to service. We have talked before about our concern that this was a single-service tender because it needed to be rushed
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