Page 96 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
night. If you were at home watching the tennis, like the majority of people were, just say it. But you don’t.
People have a right to know where the only person in the ACT who could declare a state of emergency before that fateful day was. But nobody knows where he was. Mr Corbell did say, though, “It is unbelievable that I, as a father, would leave my kids in the path of the fire.” Well, if he had listened to the cabinet briefing, when he went to bed he would have been expecting the fire on Monday. I got home at about the same time as he did. But before I came off the fire ground at Tidbinbilla, the senior officer of Parks 5 left in the Tidbinbilla area at that time said to those of us who had been out all night and had seen extraordinary things that you would never believe, “The choice today is to stay on this side of the river and defend farms or go back to the city and defend suburbs.” They knew.
Maybe Mick Castles rang the Chief Minister to read this progress report from the night before, which on page 2 says:
There is a potential for fire to reach Uriarra by midday tomorrow—
that was midday on the 18th—
the Cotter Pub and Reserve at 16:00—
that is, 4 o’clock in the afternoon—
and Mt Stromlo and potentially Narrabundah Hill by 2000 hours …
They are the minutes from the planning meeting at 6 o’clock on Friday night. If the people of Duffy and Rivett and Chapman and Kambah and Curtin and Torrens had known at 6 o’clock on the Saturday night, they may well have been able to save themselves, their houses and their possessions—and they would not have had to have put their loved ones in the path of the fire—because they could have made a decision based on fact.
It is an appalling abuse by the Chief Minister to stand here and say, “The coroner has misrepresented me. How dare she not give me a warning.” Well, how dare you not give the people of Canberra a warning. The definition of a warning is to tell somebody before it happens. At 3 o’clock, on the radio, when the Cotter had gone, when Uriarra had gone, when Stromlo had gone and when most of Duffy and Chapman had gone, it was not a warning; it was a bloody commentary!
It was like watching a football game: “The score now in Chapman is 28. Duffy’s catching up; they’ve got 44.” That was not a warning; it was a commentary—and if you do not understand that you do not understand ministerial responsibility. The Chief Minister quoted this morning: “once you are told you are responsible”. And you were told; you only have to read the report properly and stop misrepresenting it for your own devices.
And you in the Labor Party who will vote with him—“It’s party lines; go for your life”—need to look at yourselves, you need to read the report if you have not read it,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .