Page 83 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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Duffy. Those images were prepared by the coroner’s expert, Mr Cheney. Why, then, are we debating whether the Chief Minister of the ACT should be held responsible for something that the coroner’s report shows came from New South Wales, the New South Wales fire commissioner admits was his responsibility and the coroner and the federal Liberal Party say no one could have controlled? It is a bit tough to expect the Chief Minister to resign because he was in charge for a period of less than 36 hours of a situation that the coroner and Senator Heffernan, a leading Liberal, say no one could have controlled.
I said that I am deeply sorry for those that lost their lives, suffered injury and lost property. We all are. But to put the whole weight of that on the Chief Minister, who took no part in the operational decision making that led to the tragic situation, is completely wrong. Mr Speaker, this motion should be dismissed. Finally, Mr Speaker, if you look at the number of people who have been in the gallery today, you can see exactly what kind of interest the community has got and what interest the community has in supporting this ridiculous motion.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.22): Mr Speaker, we are here today because of a failure of the Chief Minister’s will—he does not even have the will to stay in the chamber when he is under censure—his failure to keep his word, and the failure of his leadership. We have seen over the past four years a pattern of systematic inaction in the lead-up to the fires, culpable indecisiveness and inaction in the midst of the crisis itself, and, despite bravura posturing to the contrary, a systematic refusal to accept responsibility subsequently, even to the extent of the now standard attack of political amnesia.
On 20 January 2003 the people of the ACT heard an emotional Chief Minister rush to the defence of the emergency services personnel with the impassioned cry, “If you’re going to blame somebody, blame me.” We have had a lot of talk here today about context, and both the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister put that in context. But, when you talk about context, what the Chief Minister seemed to be saying that day was that he was a man of principle who might see things right, that he would accept the blame.
That forthright shouldering of blame, combined with the earlier heroics of attempting to pull a drowning man from the Bendora dam, put this Chief Minister in a position where it seemed that at last the pattern of inaction and indecision could end and we would have a clear examination of what had gone wrong and why. Sadly, far from accepting actual blame, the Chief Minister set out to save his own bacon. We are here today because Jon Stanhope, the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, did not live up to the promise that he made on 20 January, nor did he keep the faith placed in him by those member of this Assembly who made him the Chief Minister.
In December 2001 we in the ACT received a wake-up call. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2001 parts of Canberra were burning, burning with a startling ferocity seeing that it was not a high-risk day. Flames lapped at our back doors, even at the back door of the emergency services headquarters. Fire had not come so close for many decades. What should we have learned from these fires was how ill-equipped we were, how ferocious fires could be, even in relatively mild days with low wind. We were told that there were problems with fire trails and there were problems with
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