Page 3321 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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As the minister indicated in question time today, we have increased expenditure on emergency services by 46 per cent. Why have we increased expenditure by so much over the last four years? Because of the level that we inherited from Mr Smyth and the previous government, because of their lack of investment. There has been a 46 per cent increase in funding for fire services under this government, year after year—$20 million-plus a year. Of course, there was a lot of ground to make up because of what we inherited from you, because you were not committed. You cannot dismiss this. You cannot walk away from it. There has been a 46 per cent increase in resourcing for fire services and emergency services in this territory in terms of what we inherited from you.
We have taken expenditure on the full suite of emergency services from just over $50 million to $77 million a year. You are not aware of the irony of your coming in here and condemning us for the work we have done in dealing with the mess we inherited from you. Never forget, in any discussion of the 2003 fires, that we had been in government for one year in terms of fuel that had built up, and the circumstance we inherited after seven years of land management by Brendan Smyth and his colleagues.
You managed for seven years with a one-year gap to the fire and you now, through these sorts of motions and sleazing and slipping around the place, suggest that you had nothing to do with it. With your underfunding of the fire service and your lack of organisation, I find the irony remarkable that you then come in here to condemn this government and this minister because we have only established 28 community fire units.
How many did you establish? None. Not one. You come in here and condemn us because we have only established 28. You seriously seek to censure the minister because he has established 28 community fire units when you established none.
Do you understand how absurd that is? Do you understand how ridiculous that makes you look, and how pathetic you are that you condemn us because we established 28 more fire units than you, when you established none? We have invested $21 million a year more into emergency services than you did—a 46 per cent advance. But you focus on one issue around vehicles and ignore the enormous work that has been done in establishing professionalism, replacing equipment, enhancing the nature of our capacity to fight fires and to deal with other emergencies.
Over and above this, of course—it is not just about fires—it is about ambulance services. It is about combating terrorism. It is about all of the other work that we do through the emergency services authority.
Mr Smyth: What about focusing on emergency services?
MR STANHOPE: There again, we inherited nothing from you in the context of our capacity to deal with emergencies such as terrorism.
Mr Smyth: Nothing has changed.
MR STANHOPE: We started from the ground up because you left us nothing. You left us absolutely no capacity to deal with those sorts of issues.
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