Page 1612 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video

work that she has been doing with the UFU, and also the work that my office has been doing with her with regard to this motion. I have circulated an amendment and I understand that it will be supported. I move the amendment circulated in my name:

Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute:

“(1) notes that:

(a) Mr Ron McLeod’s 2003 report, ‘Inquiry into the Operational Response to the January 2003 Bushfires in the ACT’, made the following recommendations:

(i) ‘A bushfire-abatement zone (BAZ) should be defined between the north-west and western perimeter of Canberra and the Murrumbidgee River and the foothills of the Brindabella Range’;

(ii) ‘A set of Bushfire Protection Planning Principles in relation to fire mitigation and suppression should be adopted and applied to future developments in the designated abatement zone’; and

(iii) ‘The abatement zone should be declared a bushfire-prone area, and the requirements of the Building Code of Australia—in particular, its standards for bushfire-prone areas—should be applied to all future developments in the zone.’;

(b) following the recommendations of Mr Ron McLeod, and in line with the later report handed down by Coroner Maria Doogan, the Emergencies Act 2004 was enacted and provided:

(i) a Bushfire Abatement Zone for planning and operational purposes;

(ii) for the BAZ to include ‘City Areas’ (‘built-up areas’ (BUA)); and

(iii) the Response Arrangements at that time (see Notifiable Instrument NI2004-499) included that: ‘If, in the opinion of the ACT Fire and Rescue, the fire poses a risk to life or property in the Built-up Area, then the ACT Fire and Rescue will assume incident control.’ This remained in place in the 2006 iteration (Notifiable Instrument NI2006-221);

(d) in 2011, the BAZ was updated to clarify response arrangements, as agreed by the then Chief Officers of the ACT Fire Brigade and the ACT Rural Fire Service;

(e) in 2016, following a review of the Emergencies Act 2004, there was an update to further clarify response arrangements; and

(f) in 2017, the BAZ and BUA boundaries were updated again to include the suburbs of Throsby and Jacka as built-up areas. This was notified by the Acting ESA Commissioner in a notifiable instrument in April 2017;

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video