Page 2532 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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budget the ESA has been returned to the bureaucratic swamp developed by the Department of Justice and Community Service—the same incompetent arrangement that failed the old Emergency Services Bureau in the 2003 fire disaster. I repeat, a very similar arrangement to that which failed the ESB in 2001 and the 2003 fires. Let us be clear on one thing. It has been the government’s failure to set down good governance models—this government’s failure to scrutinise and the successive ministers’ failures to question and be proactive when seeking advice from senior officials—that have seen the damaging financial mismanagement we have seen in recent times.
Going on from there, in relation to the restructure, I maintain that emergency services remain in some considerable difficulty because the government is still refusing to bend to the most fundamental concerns raised by senior volunteer and permanent officers. In April the ACT government met with volunteers, permanent officers and the ACT Bushfire Council in what it claims were attempts to break the impasse around the rebellion of the emergency services over the government’s restructured emergency services. I recall that over the Easter break it had become apparent the government had no intention of budging on its ill-advised, incompetent and divisive plans to restructure emergency services. Further, it became apparent to the volunteers that private and permanent officers in other services were still seething with anger. Now they will be becoming somewhat depressed over what clearly had become a throwback from the disastrous days of pre-2003. That was the view a couple of months ago and there is no reason to see why that would have changed now, despite the claims by the minister in these budget scrutinising processes.
We now turn to FireLink. This minister is a revisionist. He rewrites history and he is rewriting history to suit himself and to cover the backsides of his predecessors and the government as a whole. This government’s failure to scrutinise this process—the FireLink process—has lasted 3½ years and cost the taxpayers $5 million. The ATI product FireLink is not problematic. It is technically a well-received capability. The question here is how well was the project managed here to adapt FireLink—the product—to the ESA’s needs? We maintain that this government had no ministerial oversight of how that project was progressing. It could well be that FireLink, with the difficulties it was having, could have been re-engineered or better supported to take it to another level.
Volunteers and permanent officers were advising from late 2004 that FireLink was problematic. I know that because from early 2005 we were asking questions on their behalf—the volunteers and permanent officers behalf—and you, Chief Minister, and your government, ignored those questions and blindly accepted ESA’s advice that all was hunky-dory. I remind members of a couple of things. The Auditor-General’s report that we have seen tabled in the Assembly in the past 24 hours into the cancelled FireLink project blows the government’s argument right out of the water that the Emergency Services Authority and its officials are entirely to blame for the debacle.
The report finds that the crucial decisions about the need for a mobile data system were made by cabinet with inadequate documentary support in May 2003—14 months before the creation of the independent Emergency Services Authority in July 2004. Cabinet decisions were made six months before Peter Dunn commenced his contract as a mere project officer. Yes, perhaps he was the commissioner elect, but at that
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