Page 2061 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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The JACS portfolio also has a number of recommendations. We were made aware that the communications centre for the ESA has not gone back to Fairbairn. It would be nice to know when and why that will happen. There are also some recommendations in regard to the bushfire operational plans. There was an advert during the estimates process where the council was basically told they were finished, that is, their notification. There also is some need to make sure we understand what is the relationship between the Bushfire Council and the bushfire operational plans. The council clearly have a different understanding from the government. Indeed, there were also some recommendations about the Jerrabomberra and Rivers fire sheds and the debacle that that has been, how we have now got bays that are too small for their trucks and facilities that I think are below par for volunteers. The government really needs to explain how that occurred.
The report does go on to cover all of the major areas. I will not get through them now in the short time that we have. I just have one more in JACS and that is in regard to the prison. There are some interesting recommendations about events at the prison. Indeed, some of them did not make the cut. So I would urge members to read the footnotes, particularly on the dismissal of the superintendent.
As you can imagine, the list goes on. It was not all heavy going. I think the two or three light points for me were Ms Le Couteur trying to bring to the attention of the committee something that was on the government website. For members, Ms Le Couteur brought a piece of paper that we could view and she actually said: “When you go to the first screen, this is what you see. Then when you go to the second screen, this is what you see.” Then she actually said, “And then what you need to do is scroll down so that you can see the third screen.” We had to turn the paper over, which is the mechanics of scrolling down when you have a piece of paper that purports to be a computer screen. It was quite amusing watching members mastering the paper computer.
The other thing that was quite funny was that Ms Hunter and I noticed that every morning, just before morning tea, there was the tinkling of a spoon in a teacup and obviously somebody was getting to morning tea early. And some mornings obviously a lot of sugar had gone into the teacup because the tinkling went on for some time. It took us a number of days to work out who it was, but Ray obviously was getting to the morning tea earlier than most people. So we have christened him “Tinkerbell” and that name shall be known forthwith.
I have to thank the committee staff, particularly Chris, who is with us. Chris is in the gallery today. If members turn to page 215, paragraph 11.13, they will see the word “abstruse”, in the document. We were struggling for a word and Chris in his wisdom said, “I think you should write ‘abstruse’.” So I will leave you to go away and check your dictionaries as to what it means. That is the objective for the day in self-education. And I would challenge members, between now and the end of the budget process, to each use “abstruse” at some stage in their speeches, in acknowledgement of it having been brought to our attention.
As chair, I should thank a lot of people because a lot of people made this report happen. I will start by saying thank you very much to my colleagues, Ms Hunter, who
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