Page 36 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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speedily being overtaken by the events. But to suggest that I was downplaying the event in the media is preposterous.
I gave another interview on the ABC at 3 pm on 18 January. This is the time identified by the coroner as the time that I was downplaying the emergency. On the ABC at 3 o’clock I said:
Well, we’re still struggling for confirmation across the board in relation to a whole range of issues that we’re facing.
This is the interview for which I am criticised specifically by the coroner as downplaying the emergency. I continued:
The advice that I have, that a minimum of 30 to 40 houses in Duffy are confirmed as being on fire. There are grave concerns that there could be two or three times that many, but those numbers haven’t been confirmed to me. We’re confirming those.
As you can imagine, there is so much going on around the ACT. There are, as I understand it, three houses in Giralang that are burning or have burnt. There are, at this stage, as yet unconfirmed reports about houses in Chapman that are also, perhaps, already burning.
We’re facing a grave, there can’t be a graver situation facing a community than this, as is obvious to everybody. There’s a way to go yet, as is clear from the bulletins that you’re broadcasting.
We are concerned that the fire, as it currently flanks to the west, will become a front when the winds change to the south or the south-east in a couple of hours time.
That’s the basis of the revised warnings in relation to a new, or additional, numbers of suburbs that potentially will face the front when the wind changes.
This is the transcript to which the coroner refers and which she concluded proves that I downplayed the emergency. The language I used during radio interviews on 18 January was consistent with the advice that I had received, minute by minute, from the ACT Emergency Services Bureau. I accepted then, and I still accept, the bureau’s legitimate desire on the day to avoid fuelling panic. I did say during those interviews that it was essential that people not panic. I asked them not to panic.
The coroner’s allegation that I downplayed the seriousness of the fires is abhorrent, repugnant and unsupported by the evidence. In fact, it is contrary to all the evidence. It also flies in the face of logic. What reason could I have possibly have had to downplay the gravity of the emergency? What purpose could have been served?
Equally, I cannot imagine what purpose could have been served had I chosen to play up the significance of the facts that were in my possession, to embellish perhaps or to embroider. Is it seriously suggested by the coroner and the Leader of the Opposition that I ought to have urged hysteria rather than calm? Is it suggested that, in defiance of the advice from emergency professionals, I should have called on people to flee their homes and to choke the streets? Should I have been shrill instead of calm? Would that
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