Page 64 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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bureaucracy or by politicians of any colour. It was an unprecedented event, defying prediction and placing those charged with responding to and managing the disaster in completely uncharted territory.
Against this background, the opposition now tries to put the charge that this government, this Chief Minister, is guilty of something approaching wilful negligence. Their central claim is that this government, this Chief Minister, knew about the danger posed by the fires burning outside the urban fringes of Canberra; that two days prior, at the meeting of 16 January, we, the cabinet, had been warned about the direction and magnitude of the potential firestorm; that we knew the western suburbs were in imminent peril; and that this government simply chose to do nothing.
If the Assembly is to believe the opposition, we just sat on our collective hands and waited for Canberra to burn—a ridiculous proposition, completely unsupported by fact or evidence. This government, this Chief Minister, has never shied away from responsibility or accountability in relation to the bushfires. In fact, it is the opposite. We have examined the response to the bushfires of 2003 in detail. We have changed structures; we have reformed the emergency services. We now have in place enhanced processes and procedures and new technology to address decades of deficiency, particularly in relation to financial resources. The government is acutely conscious of the human toll wrought by the events of 18 January 2003 and the lasting financial, emotional and psychological impacts that still affect so many in our community.
An honest appraisal of the issues will show that, while there were areas of the emergency response that could have been handled better, overwhelmingly this Chief Minister acquitted his responsibilities diligently and with the welfare of the Canberra community firmly at the front of his mind. The opposition is trying to argue today that Mr Stanhope is somehow responsible for the operational decisions taken leading up to and during the bushfires.
Under what standards should ministers be judged? In the coronial inquest into Katie Bender’s death, Coroner Madden suggested that Kate Carnell should not have got involved in the manner she did and that she should have left the regulatory and operational arms of the public service to do their job. When talking about the role of the Chief Minister’s office in micro-managing the implosion, Coroner Madden said:
If the relevant branches of the regulatory agencies had been appropriately engaged at the outset, in whole or in part, and allowed to discharge their functions to their fullest capacity then it is possible the tragedy would have been averted.
In short, the message from this inquest is that in certain situations politicians should get out of the way and let professionals in the public service do their job. If we apply the comment from Coroner Madden to the role of Mr Stanhope and his cabinet during the bushfires, then that is exactly what happened.
In Auditor-General’s report No 2 of 2001, entitled Enhancing professionalism and accountability, the Auditor-General suggested that, at its narrowest, ministers would be responsible only for acting improperly or misleading the Assembly and that, at its broadest, ministerial responsibility would be in accordance with the views expressed
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