Page 123 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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There was also much grumbling over the ESA call to issue a “leave Tharwa now” edict earlier in the week and, additionally, that it was followed only 20 minutes later with an official call that it was now too late to leave. Many of those on the ground did not believe that the threat at that time warranted such a call. There were also a number of questions being asked about the stationing of resources in Tuggeranong just in case the fire reached the suburbs. Those who questioned this at the time believed that those resources should be actually fighting the fires, rather than preparing for what might happen in the suburbs.
In the first instance, the ESA has made no apologies for these things and, indeed, it has, mainly through Commissioner Whelan and Joe Murphy, continued to outline its priorities and basically said that the first priority was the preservation of life, followed by the preservation of property. It is difficult to argue against those priorities but, in line with what has come forward in Mrs Jones’s motion, I think that we really must forensically look at what we have done, what was done well, and what perhaps could have been done better. This was a wonderful fire effort, and I commend all those who played a role, but let us not believe for a moment that it was perfect. There will be many lessons to be learned from this emergency. Let us commit to learning them.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (10.34): I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this motion today, following on from our extensive discussion yesterday. I join Mrs Jones in expressing our gratitude to the incredible range of people who have made a contribution to what has been a significant effort in recent times to deal with the natural disasters that have faced us. I spoke yesterday about a range of agencies. I certainly acknowledge the ones listed in the motion, including the Emergency Services Agency, the Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service, ACT Fire & Rescue, the ACT Ambulance Service, ACT Policing and ACT parks and conservation.
As I noted yesterday, across the ACT public service many, many other people were involved in a range of ways, from the senior officials, the directors-general, who were sitting in daily—sometimes more than daily—security and emergency management cabinet meetings as well as the sensov meetings, through to people at Access Canberra who put on extra shifts to ensure that there was someone to talk to if people needed to get a range of information. Right across ACT government there have been an enormous number of contributors.
As was touched on yesterday and again today, a whole range of community members have stepped up, be that in recognised non-government organisations such as the Red Cross and various others—WIRES, ACT Wildlife Rescue, all of these sorts of groups, which are perhaps more formal, in a sense non-government organisations—and then the community members who realised there was a gap or there was something they thought they could do that would make a contribution and just got stuck in and did it. I think it has demonstrated the wonders of things like Facebook. For all the ills that social media can have, it also has enormous positives and people have been able to activate groups or activate things to do by putting it out there and having lots of other people jumping in and helping.
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