Page 128 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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Gungahlin. As Mr Parton mentioned, there are concerns in the Lanyon Valley about the method and route of evacuation which should be discussed. There are the firebreaks and suburban planning. There is an appetite in the community to understand better what the bushfire operational plan says and whether it is good enough or whether we can do better. There is a conversation to be had about hazard reduction. There is a strong appetite for that.
It is appalling, and I think many people would be very concerned, that we do not have rollover and falling object protection systems for many of our emergency vehicles. We know that this season there was one falling tree incident within the ACT close to or on a vehicle. If we can protect better from that, we really must. When the roads were closed to go down the coast, there was a public conversation and a media conversation about trees that were burning on the inside that may have looked as though they had finished burning but had not. There are trees that have lost their integrity and can fall because of their sheer weight and the lack of integrity on the inside after a fire has gone through. That is something that the mainstream community is now discussing and learning about. We can take that opportunity to make sure that we use that knowledge to gain support for better protecting our firefighters, not just people who are driving on the roads after the fire.
The issue of training to use lights and sirens for RFS personnel was raised with me right at the beginning of the fire season. Now we have seen an example, in the Beard fire, of how this impacts people’s ability to do their jobs. I think people were rightly disappointed that there were mixed messages. They were not to use them, then they were to use them. They got stuck in traffic and other services were able to get through and they were not. That is the perfect demonstration of why we have to get through our training with the volunteers, who are very willing to attend training, particularly after hours and on the weekends. I am sure it can be delivered, and it must be delivered better than it has been.
I want to put on record my thanks to the federal health minister, who has not yet been mentioned in our debates in this place this week, to my knowledge. He opened the federal stockpile of P2 masks to the ACT. These are masks that the federal government has stockpiled for epidemics—for example, influenza outbreaks. The government provided us with a very large number of masks for the vulnerable people who might need them. As Minister Rattenbury said, it is something that we will have to think about for the future: whether we have our own stockpile for such events or whether there is something even better that we can do about air quality issues and how people cope.
I also put on record my thanks to all the public servants who worked super hard, especially during the state of alert and then in the state of emergency when the whole government was geared towards the Orroral Valley fire. As I have mentioned, I also want to thank the uniformed personnel and volunteers. Before I conclude, a very special thanks goes to Minister Gentleman. Thanks to Minister Gentleman because, for the first time since I have been here, Minister Gentleman answered his own emails during this crisis. It was extraordinarily comforting to those who were coming to me that he responded immediately. It goes to show what can be done in this place.
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