Page 515 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 14 March 2007
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any opposition, any minor party on the cross benches—is always seeking to defeat its opponents; that is just the way that parliaments operate.
Mr Corbell: So it is political.
MR PRATT: But that is not the point. This is not political.
Mr Corbell: Oh!
MR PRATT: This is not completely political, minister; this is not completely political. The opposition is the voice of members of the community who have expressed their deep concern that the restructure of the emergency services is not going to work. Having assessed that the restructure is not going to work—that is the point that we take as well; that is our analysis—it is the duty of the opposition to stand in this place to represent the very many voices of our volunteer organisations and our professionals to tell you, minister, through you, Mr Speaker, to tell the government that the restructure cannot work. It will fail; it needs to be sorted out.
As an opposition, we also have a duty to raise weaknesses in the system which may very severely affect community safety in the ACT. Dr Foskey, it is our duty to stand here and raise concerns about what we see as an unworkable restructure. We are not here to simply hope that the mighty come crashing down. It is much more than that, I assure you.
As to the points raised by Dr Foskey about the business plan, I agree with Dr Foskey—I was to raise the point in my closing address—that the business plan looks okay. It looks all right. It seems to be a useful document. But we question whether it can be properly implemented in its own right. We will continue to examine the business plan; there is a lot to look at.
However, the point that we make is this: the business plan will be useless if the organisation implementing the business plan is inefficient. That is the problem we have in this place. The restructure has now developed an emergency services organisation which is inefficient. We have seen across the board that the volunteers and professional officers are severely concerned about it, so how can the business plan be properly implemented?
I make another point too: how can the business plan be implemented if the strategic bushfire management plan is not an efficient instrument? We claim that it is not. Until about 10 days ago, the strategic bushfire management plan was still a draft document. I think the minister is saying that version 1 of the SBMP has now been locked in place, but we have yet to see that as a reality. We know that only a handful of bushfire operational plans have been created, and therefore there are no plans covering the ACT in its entirety. We question whether the business management plan, the business plan, can be properly implemented.
The next point I would go to is this: Dr Foskey said that we are not the experts and therefore we should leave it to the professional experts to tell us what needs to be done. I put it that “we are not the experts” is the Nuremberg defence. It is the defence that this government—
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