Page 2920 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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released some of the internal reviews, but the others are internal and they are of no interest to the community or we are just not releasing them at all.”
There is a lot of interest about this in the community. When you take it in the context of what the Auditor-General says in her report 5 of 2013, it is quite important. It is worth reading the government’s response:
As per the Government’s response to an Estimates question taken on notice during the 2013 Estimates hearings, a number of internal reviews that have been undertaken are considered to be financial, budget or commercial in confidence or are of an internal operational nature that is not considered appropriate for public release.
What is it about internal operational nature that is not considered appropriate for public release? This is the whole problem, in this country, of combating bushfires. In 2004 the Ellis, Kanowski and Whelan report made it quite clear that time and time again we forget what happens. We go into a flurry of activity after fires: you see governments throw money at emergency services and you get your reviews that come through, whether they be royal commissions or coronial inquiries. Then there is another round of recommendations where governments inevitably agree to everything, throw another round of money in and then think, “Job done.”
Ellis, Kanowski and Whelan talk about the bushfire cycle, particularly the cycle of complacency that says, “We have fixed that problem. It has gone away.” It does not go away. You only have to read the operational history of all the various fires in the ACT that is outlined very clearly in the Auditor-General’s report. There is a major fire in the ACT about every seven or eight years. So at 10 years from the 2003 fires, we are overdue for a major event.
What we have got is an Auditor-General who says that the government do not comply with the law because they do not detail what is required to meet this need. I know that there are reviews that tell the government what is required. This year’s budget is interesting; it is actually quite a change. The minister has finally admitted that these reports exist; until now they have just denied that such reports existed.
I am told that some years ago the four service chiefs were all asked to give a sort of gold, silver and bronze appraisal of what was required. When they were submitted to Treasury, Treasury added them all up and came up with a number of $72 million and that was the ESA budget for that year. It bore no relation to what was required.
That is why it is important that these reviews be made public. Let us see what they are. Are they are considered to be financial, budget or commercial-in-confidence, or of an internal operational nature? For internal operational nature, read: facilities and equipment required to be prepared to cover the ACT in the event of an emergency, whether it be a flood, a bushfire or some other sort of catastrophe.
In the Auditor-General’s reports, there are a number of recommendations that tell me that the cycle of complacency still exists. One of the recommendations was: “We are not sure your emergency warning system works. Test it more regularly.”
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