Page 2533 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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point he had no power, he had no authority and all of these decisions were put in place. Peter Dunn would have been given his marching orders in late 2006 to take some of those $23 million and to develop a mobile data system. The cabinet decisions were made. In one of the key findings the Auditor-General states:
There was no documentary evidence that a detailed business case supporting this funding decision—
That is referring to the $26 million—
was prepared and considered by cabinet.
How was the ESA eventually going to maintain a stable project, manage its project properly, if cabinet had not already laid down the pathway of accountability through a competent business case? We now know that the Auditor-General, despite also being quite critical of the ESA and its management of FireLink, was very critical of this government for not supporting or for not sorting out its business case and its preparations before the project was commenced. So what we are left with now is nowhere near what was outlined by the McLeod report. In fact, the community is left with nothing that will come close to delivering the suitable mobile data and automatic vehicle location system. The Stanhope government now needs to earnestly investigate some sort of mobile data system. The challenge is for the minister to take us beyond the whiteboard and markers and to see whether something can be salvaged out of this debacle.
I now turn to equipment, vehicles and the heavy tanker program. In this year’s budget the government has announced a $6.5 million program over four years as the ESA fire vehicle replacement program. Where is the supertanker that was promised two budgets ago? The supertanker project is a very important project. Get it wrong and we have years of damage to be repaired. According to the budget, $2.5 million is to be spent in the next 12 months to accelerate that program. We will be interested to see how this procurement process evolves, given the great need for front-line vehicle capability and the correct vehicles. The government will surely not repeat the mistakes of the past and rush into a purchase without proper consultation with the volunteers, who will ultimately be responsible for the use of these vehicles. We do not wish to see the fire tanker program become FireLink on wheels.
I remind the government of its monumental failure with front-line RFS vehicle serviceability and then its failure at the beginning of this last bushfire season—25 per cent of front-line vehicles down three days into the 2006 bushfire season. The reason—because it failed to keep the funding and the maintenance standards up. As soon as the balloon went up the vehicles were found wanting. Minister Corbell has crowed about the initiatives in this year’s budget directed at volunteer training. According to Mr Corbell’s release:
The measures in this Budget further recognise the vital role our volunteers play in emergency management in the ACT.
Yet in 2006 southern brigade could only get one of 24 volunteers trained up in an entire 12-month period. I welcome the new funding. The opposition is quite pleased to see that additional funding, but like so much of this year’s budget, with this welcome
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