Page 80 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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In relation to the last two points, members will be aware through statements to the Assembly and answers to questions in this place that much has been done. The strategic bushfire management plan has been in place for more than two years and is currently being reviewed. That plan requires all agencies to have a bushfire operations plan.
As an example of the robustness of that process, in just the past month staff of my department assisted with fires in Kosciusko national park which burnt more than 20,000 hectares approximately 15 kilometres west of the ACT. The help included personnel in the incident management teams at Cooma and Tumut and firefighters. In particular, remote area firefighters contained a number of fires sparked by lightning strikes. Staff also planned and implemented a number of activities in Namadgi national park in case the fires escaped the control lines in New South Wales, as they did in 2003, and entered the ACT. We are much better prepared than we were in 2003.
Over the past couple of years, experienced firefighting officers have left the public service and need to be replaced. Agencies are providing training to national standards where they exist. This requires skills maintenance through experience or ongoing refresher training. Non-national training is provided to locally developed skill programs. Nationally recognised competency-based training has been introduced for most bushfire operational activities.
Of the 73 recommendations in the report, approximately half have already been implemented through annual and ongoing commitments. Many others have been partially implemented already. This Government did not sit around waiting for the coroner to make what were obvious recommendations arising from a combination of exceptional circumstances. We need to keep in mind, Mr Speaker, that the coroner did not just make recommendations. In her letter to the Attorney-General, she said:
… once the four fires had combined to produce the firestorm … containment and control were impossible, despite the best efforts of the firefighters.
In the foreword to her report, she said that the people at the fire front “gave their all, working unstintingly in the face of fires that by 18 January had grown beyond control”. She said at page 3 of volume I:
Once the McIntyres Hut fire in NSW gathered momentum … it became inevitable that the resultant firestorm would deliver its fury to both rural and urban areas of the ACT, turning some areas into an inferno that firefighters had no way of controlling
The coroner said at page 46 of volume I:
… I do not question the integrity or honesty of any of the senior officers of the Emergency Services Bureau. Rather, I highlight poor judgment, insufficient knowledge and experience, and an inadequate response to the fires—
by those officers. Mr Speaker, it must be noted that there was nothing the Chief Minister could do about any of those matters. The decision making about how
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