Page 86 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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As Mr Pratt has said here today, they did not have the intellectual curiosity to find out, or could it be plausible deniability? An old Kipling poem that has been going through my head for weeks now contains the words, “Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.” That is what it was about for Jon Stanhope and his cabinet: they did not ask for fear that they would find out an inconvenient truth.
I have been astonished and appalled by the claims that “I wasn’t the responsible minister on the day”. It is clear that the question here is not simply about what happened on the day, but a pattern of inaction and indecision that reached back for many years. As for attempts to deflect the blame onto others, I am sorry: the buck stops with Jon Stanhope. If others were in charge, who put them there, or who kept them in their positions?
Jon Stanhope has shown himself to be either a knave or a fool. As Mr Seselja has already said, it does not matter which it is. It shows that he is not fit to lead the ACT and that he must resign. Jon Stanhope must resign because he was the minister responsible for the preservation of our environment and on his watch we saw the almost complete destruction of the environment of the Namadgi national park and the Tidbinbilla nature reserve, as well as the economic loss inflicted on ACT forests and the compromising of our water supply catchments.
On Jon Stanhope’s watch, the warnings were ignored and Canberra burnt. As the minister for the environment and one of the ministers responsible for fuel reduction in the territory, did he ask questions about our preparedness? Did he ever ask questions about how to protect the very fragile elements of our park, such as the mountain ashes and sphagnum bogs which were the primary source of Canberra’s once uniquely high-quality water supply and an essential breeding habitat for endangered species such as the northern corroboree frog?
Did he ever inquire about the security of the Tidbinbilla nature reserve which he bleats about all the time? Did he ever ask? The answer, clearly, is no. In his own words, it had never crossed his mind. If it had never crossed his mind, Mr Speaker, that is a failing. What did cross the Chief Minister’s mind? Did the minister for the environment and the minister responsible for the parks brigade ever ask why that brigade came home from Bendora on 8 January before the fire was put out? Did he ever satisfy himself that the reasons given were correct and valid?
Mr Speaker, 8 January 2003 was a crucial day. If we had acted differently on that day, we may not have got to the emergency of 18 January. If the crews that were tasked to those fires had stayed, we would almost certainly have had a different outcome. The crew sent to Stockyard Spur were called home even before they rolled out a hose or a knapsack. Volunteers deployed to that fire believe that they had a real chance of putting it out on 8 January. Volunteers at Stockyard Spur were angry at their recall. They speculate that they were pulled out only because the Bendora crew had come home.
Why did the Bendora crew come home? Was it lack of overtime money, was it about OH&S or was it, as rumour has it, because of a birthday party in town? What did the Chief Minister know about the operation of the fires in those early days that he has
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