Page 24 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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that the then emergency services minister, Bill Wood, managed to go out to Lanyon on the Saturday, in the middle of the day, to retrieve the Nolan collection. But the government, with Mr Stanhope at the centre of emergency operations, by his own testimony, still did not warn the people of Canberra, who knew nothing until shortly before the fires struck the urban edge at around 3.00 pm. Why didn’t you warn the people of Canberra, Chief Minister? Wasn’t it your responsibility to share some of that information? At what point did you propose to take the people of Canberra into your confidence?
Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister’s failure to warn the people of Canberra, particularly those in Dunlop and Weston Creek, was an appalling lack of judgment, if not an outright abrogation of responsibility. As Chief Minister, the office where the buck stops, it is his job to tell the people of any potential danger and to advise them to prepare. Even as late as 3.02 pm on 18 January, at the very moment the fire front was hitting Duffy, Mr Stanhope said on ABC radio that people should not be unduly alarmed. Really?
The sky was on fire, there were embers flying kilometres ahead, houses were burning, the people of Canberra could see, hear, smell, taste and feel its effects, and you said you did not want them to be unduly alarmed. I put it to you, Chief Minister, that your failure to inform and your failure to have a plan turned out to be far more alarming for a community totally unprepared for the devastation that was about to fall upon that community. And then there is your unexplained absence from 6.00 pm on the 17th to noon on 18 January. Where were you? What were you doing? Why had the ship’s captain abandoned the helm when the storm was about to hit and why won’t you tell us where you were and what you were doing?
Of great concern were all the collective memory lapses during the inquiry. The coroner was so incensed by that monumental loss of memory that she actually kept count. Without counting the Chief Minister’s own lapses, many of his officials were unable to answer no fewer than 1,188 questions because they either could not recall or could not remember. We have to ask ourselves how much more we would know if those nearly 1,200 questions were answered.
Mr Speaker, we should not be having this debate today. Mr Stanhope should have resigned after the Doogan inquest findings were handed down. His behaviour in this whole saga has been less than exemplary. He even took the unprecedented step of appealing against his own coroner, an Australian first. Why do that? What was so important that he had to shut down the inquiry? Our system of responsible and accountable government requires him to resign.
By 17 January, most of the people I have discussed this matter with over the several years since the event had concerns, and had concerns even on that day. On that day there was a dry, hot wind—at that stage, I think, predominantly coming from the west—and there was smoke, causing limited visibility. People indicated to me that they held a fear these fires could get into Canberra. Indeed, one needs only to look at the accounts of victims in the coronial report. It is useful, I think, to quote several of those.
Let us take the example of Michael Boyle. He had been using binoculars to watch the McIntyres Hut fire from his home in Chapman for a period of about 10 days, and
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