Page 2968 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006

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them. There are three or four vulnerable corridors missing, but it is a starting point. Perhaps the minister would like to look at that.

Leave granted.

MR PRATT: I table the following paper:

Bushfire vulnerable areas—Map published in the Canberra Sunday Times, 10 September 2006.

Let’s get back to the government’s bible of bushfire management, the SBMP. In response to many of my concerns and the community’s concerns about long grass, the government often argues that fuel hazards are being managed in accordance with the SBMP. However, it is interesting to reflect on something that the then commissioner of the Emergency Services Authority, Peter Dunn, said on 25 October 2004 in an ABC online news grab relating to the coronial inquest into the 2003 fires. He said:

We’re heading down a path, as you can see from the strategic bushfire management plan, that says we’re moving on and you then have to say to yourself what if these are findings that would require us to significantly change direction.

That, to me, is an admission that the SBMP is not all it is cracked up to be. The ESA commissioner then basically questioned whether a complete change of direction might be needed and the current version of the SBMP may be completely wrong. Is it because the coronial inquest has been delayed? We are concerned that the plan needs tightening.

MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mrs Burke): The member’s time has expired.

MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (4.17): I would like to do two things. Firstly, I would like to move the amendment circulated in my name. I move:

Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute:

“(1) notes the Government’s progress in finalising the Strategic Bushfire Management Plan (SBMP); and

(2) notes the following initiatives have occurred since the January 2003 bushfires that clearly demonstrate that the ACT is so much better prepared for the 2006/2007 bushfire season than was the case four years earlier:

(a) development of and implementation of the Emergencies Act 2004;

(b) development of a CBRN Plan for the ACT;

(d) development of an Evacuation Plan for the ACT;

(e) purchased new vehicles for the Authority, ACT State Emergency Service, ACT Rural Fire Service, ACT Ambulance Service, ACT Fire Brigade, including:

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