Page 32 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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Not a single person present at that cabinet briefing gave evidence that could support those comments to the coronial inquiry. One stand-alone sentence, to the effect that Dunlop and Weston Creek were the areas identified as being the greatest risk, seems to have been extracted without context from the notes of a single officer present at the meeting. There is no telling whether the sentence referred to words uttered at the briefing, let alone by whom they might have been uttered. There is no telling whether they reflected that officer’s own thoughts or were an inference derived from the words of others and, if so, which others. This statement was not included in the cabinet briefing paper or in the notes of the briefing prepared by the director of the cabinet office, who was formally serving as cabinet note-taker. Most witnesses to the inquest could not recall any reference to those suburbs.
I personally recalled the reference to Weston Creek and Dunlop in the context of “the suburbs towards which the fires might travel in the event that they did spread”. I repeated this in my evidence to the inquest. The understanding I took from the cabinet briefing on 16 January was that Dunlop and Weston Creek, as the suburbs on the urban edge most directly in line of the fires, would logically be the suburbs at greatest risk if the fires ever approached the urban area. But on 16 January 2003, on the advice made available to the cabinet, that was still a big if.
On 16 January, the risk of the fires approaching Canberra’s suburbs was still presented by our officials to cabinet as a “possibility”—if stronger north-westerly winds caused the McIntyres Hut fire to spot over its containment lines. To give an indication of just how much of an if this was, the New South Wales Fire Brigade chose to locate their forward control headquarters directly in the path of the McIntyres Hut fire. No evidence—none—was presented to the inquest to suggest that a single person—
MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired. Mr Stanhope, you may wish to seek leave to speak in the same terms as Mr Stefaniak; that is, without limitation.
MR STANHOPE: I do. I meant to do that, Mr Speaker.
Leave granted
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, no evidence—none—was presented to the inquest to suggest that a single person attending that cabinet briefing on 16 January regarded or described the potential of the fires to reach the urban area of Canberra as a “serious” one.
In my evidence to the inquest I said that the nature and tone of the cabinet briefing had been that the potential for fire to reach the suburbs was not a real live possibility. That was my evidence. I certainly received no advice that led me to believe that the fire would destroy property in suburban Canberra. At no stage did I receive that advice.
The subsequent actions of others who attended that cabinet briefing support this recollection. Two of the ministers present at the meeting—including the responsible minister, the Minister for Emergency Services—had made plans to go on leave from
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