Page 29 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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But let us not forget that four years have now passed since the firestorm—four years of investment and activity in the areas of disaster preparedness and responsiveness, four years during which funding for our emergency services has grown by more than 40 per cent and during which structural, communication and other reforms have radically altered how we guard against fire and how we respond to it.
I will go into more detail about this in a moment. Suffice it to say now that as government, as individuals, as householders, as volunteers and as a community, our capacity to prepare for and respond to natural and man-made disasters of all kinds has been utterly transformed in answer not just to the firestorm but in response, of course, to a deteriorating global security environment.
Of the 61 exhaustive recommendations made by former Commonwealth Ombudsman Ron McLeod in his thorough, sober, and forensic inquiry into the 2003 fires, fully 59 have been funded and implemented by the government. This represents a revolution in approach and an investment in resources unmatched in this city’s history. It is an investment and a revolution that continues to this day as we refine our approach to fireproofing the city as far as is humanly possible. And that, I believe, is what the people of this territory have wanted to see happen over the past four years. They have wanted action. They have wanted investment. They have wanted a government prepared to learn from the past. They have got it.
The people of Canberra have wanted to see a government prepared to take expert advice, not just on what happened over the space of a few short hours on 18 January 2003 but on what happened in the decades that preceded that day, the decades during which we as a community were unwittingly creating the setting for a firestorm. They have wanted a government prepared and equipped to do whatever was necessary to turn things around. They have wanted assurance and reassurance that this would never happen again.
They have wanted a government prepared to take hard decisions, such as the decision not to restore the city’s much loved and iconic pine plantations, and to take momentous decisions in relation to the revegetation of the catchment. They have wanted a visionary approach in relation to the rebuilding of the rural villages to create truly sustainable settlements. They have wanted Tidbinbilla back better than ever, the Cotter back better than ever, and Stromlo back better than ever. These are things that I and my ministers have worked strenuously to deliver. It is what we have delivered and continue to deliver.
Mr Speaker, it came as a shock late last year when I received from the coroner a section 55 notice advising me that she intended to make adverse comments about me in her report and inviting me to respond. There may be some people who will think me naive for feeling surprised in light of the fact that the government had joined an apprehended bias application against the coroner. But I was surprised to be personally singled out. And the reason I was surprised was that not once in the course of taking evidence and calling witnesses did the coroner put to me in court, in public, in a place and space where I might defend myself or cross-examine or call contrary evidence, the conclusions that she draws about me in her published report—not once.
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