Page 92 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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to the recommendations in the McLeod report in their entirety. As I said, those comments have already been made by others, so I will not repeat them. But I think it is particularly unfortunate that the coroner’s report has crossed that political boundary and thereby devalued itself.
Secondly, it is my understanding that cabinet was briefed on the fires on 16 January 2003. I do not know that from personal experience because I am not a member of cabinet so I was not party to it. But I think it is beyond belief that cabinet was briefed on this matter, told that there was a likelihood that the fires would burn into the suburbs and then walked away from that briefing and did nothing about it.
What actually happened was that that briefing occurred. Ms Gallagher was on leave. Mr Stanhope as Chief Minister, Mr Quinlan as Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Corbell and Mr Wood were all at that briefing. Then Mr Wood, who was at that stage the emergency services minister, went on leave. He was so concerned about it that he went on leave. Mr Corbell, after fighting the fires on the night of 17 January, then went home, went to bed and left his children playing in the backyard. We are supposed to believe that Mr Corbell had so little care for his children that he would allow them to be in the way of the firestorm front. I cannot believe that. That is why I cannot support this motion.
Comments have also been made along the lines of: why, if this was a concern, were these questions not asked of the Chief Minister when he appeared before the coronial inquest? Why wasn’t Mr Wood called, why wasn’t Mr Corbell called and why wasn’t Mr Quinlan called as to their recollections? None of them was called. So there is a big question mark over some of the report, and, as I said, that is unfortunate.
There was one further point I wished to make, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am sorry; it has just gone out of my mind.
Mr Mulcahy: Another memory loss. That is 1,151. Sorry.
MS MacDONALD: That is okay. You can continue to be juvenile, if you so desire. That is your choice, Mr Mulcahy.
There was one other point. As members would be aware, Mr Wood was here earlier. He and I had a conversation about how long he was emergency services minister. He had been in the position for only a couple of months. Before him, Mr Quinlan had been the minister. My office went through some of the information for me in preparation for today. Mr Wood had been minister for maybe a month, maybe two months, when this situation occurred, but he was not called. Mr Quinlan had been the Minister for Emergency Services for about 10 months before that. The Stanhope Labor government had been in office for one year, two months and six days before the fire hit.
Yes, there were many things that we needed to learn from this. I believe that we have learnt from the experience and we are continuing to try to act on that to ensure that this situation will never happen again. But how many years, months and days were the Carnell and Humphries governments in office before that and how much responsibility do they bear for this as well? I do not support the motion.
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