Page 2975 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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Moving the amendment that I have moved has allowed me to put on record a very long list of activities of the Emergency Services Authority and others in response to bushfire threat in the ACT. I commend the Emergency Services Authority for the activities that they have undertaken over the last few years. I remember from my time as minister that bunch of committed people doing things that the rest of Australia could only dream of. I commend them for that and I commend the amendment to the Assembly.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.30): Mr Speaker, the Greens will join Mr Pratt in noting with concern the lack of progress in finalising the strategic bushfire management plan, version 2. However, I will not be supporting paragraph (b) of part (1) of the motion moved by Mr Pratt. I am not entirely comfortable with the point about addressing the deficiencies in the existing plan, in part because the deficiencies as Mr Pratt sees them are not as I would, and in part because it seems that the implementation is the problem rather than this first stage of planning.
I flag now that I will be proposing an amendment, which has been circulated, to draw attention to a major impediment to the implementation of planning, and the proper finalisation of planning, through cuts to the former environment agencies. I now know that the government also plans to amend the motion, so obviously I will be moving my amendment a little later in this debate.
The strategic bushfire management plan was supposed to have been released in two stages. Stage 1, or version 1, was released in January 2005. In the words of the then minister’s foreword, version 1 was to “set the scene and provide clear objectives, strategies and actions for bushfire management”. Version 2 was supposed to have provided some more detailed plans on some of the more complex issues. Again quoting the minister:
Further analysis and investigation will be conducted until 1 July 2005 when version 2 will be finalised and formalised.
That was 14 months ago. It seems that the more complex issues are proving a challenge. But exactly why the delay and what issues are holding up the plan are a mystery as we had not heard from the minister on this subject until the debate today, and I am not even sure that we heard about it today. It is important to get the work right.
More recently the government has also fundamentally rearranged the responsible Emergency Services Authority. We have lost the commissioner and two assistant commissioners. Then there has been a major restructure of and cuts to the land management agencies who need to both develop and implement more specific operational plans. And we have had a change of minister. So working out what are the priorities and where is the expertise is very difficult in this situation. This does not account for the delays over the previous 12 months or so but it does mean that we are not in a good position to expedite anything with confidence.
Meanwhile, the activities that have been carried out are not necessarily being done in a strategic way. It seems that some are being done in a hurry to make it look as though there was strong action—fire trail locations and some clearing, for example. This is not the place to go into detail on this point but there is a lot of scientific knowledge about
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