Page 3325 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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We have heard today of a litany of problems. In fact, we have heard of them over the last few days—indeed, the last couple of weeks. We have heard of the problems with the vehicles and the fact that 40 per cent of them are defective, vehicles that should have been replaced. We have heard of the problems in relation to the trunk radio network and the FireLink network as well. We have heard of the problems in relation to the community fire units. The government trumpeted that there were going to be something like, I think, 75 and we have ended up with 28, a recommendation of McLeod partly accepted by the government and then stopped. As Mr Pratt quite clearly says, there are significant areas of Canberra which are vulnerable as a result of that. We have heard about problems in relation to the new headquarters at Fairbairn. We have heard, too, of the complacency of the minister in stating that we are light years ahead.
If he had actually said that there were a few problems that he still needed to iron out, fair enough, the opposition would be involved in a stunt if it moved a censure motion in relation to that. But the minister has exuded an air of complacency that simply is not warranted and he does have a responsibility as minister to administer his department properly and, when such problems are brought to his attention, to take appropriate action. Clearly, he has failed to do that and clearly, as a result of that, he does deserve to be censured.
Accordingly, Mr Pratt’s motion is very well founded. I can read the numbers and the motion is going to go down, but it should serve as a wake-up call to the minister. We are going to be in for a very bad fire season. I am no expert in terms of how the minister is going to fix up his communications problems but, quite clearly, that needs to be done as a matter of urgency and, quite clearly, the minister needs to ensure that he gets his vehicles on line, operating and able to get out and put out fires as quickly as possible and he needs to ensure that any other necessary steps are taken to ensure that we are as well prepared as possible.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (4.05): This motion today is, in my view, abhorrent. It is abhorrent because at the root of it is an attempt to make some cheap political points and to try to achieve some cheap and pathetic political advantage from what is, at the end of the day, a fundamental issue about the ability of our community to be as safe as it possibly can be in the event of an emergency.
We had the pathetic and sad comment from Mr Smyth earlier today, before he was thrown out, that no houses burnt down on his watch. We all know in our hearts that he was just lucky. We know that because we all know with the benefit of hindsight that the level of fuel for fire in the Namadgi national park had been building up for over a decade. Mr Stefaniak acknowledged as much in his speech this afternoon. It is a cheap, pathetic political point for Mr Smyth to say that nothing burnt down on his watch. How sad is that and how demeaning is that to those people who did lose their homes in what was a disaster of unparalleled proportions in the ACT? For politicians to make cheap political points by saying that no homes burnt down on their watch but they did on ours is pathetic.
I do not speak much in this place about what I do in other parts of my life, but one thing I am very proud of, as with other parts of my life, is that I am a volunteer with the Rivers
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