Ms O’CONNOR question to MINISTER for PARKS and ENVIROMENT, Mr DUIGAN
Mr President, this is just a quick follow-up question to the Minister for Parks and the Environment. You made reference to the resourcing for Parks and you said they are resourced sufficiently for a typical fire season. What happens? What are the arrangements should this fire season turn out to be atypical?
ANSWER
Mr President, I am seeking some of my own advice –
Ms O’Connor – Because presumably you would have – there would be contingencies, of course.
Mr DUIGAN – Mr President, I thank the member for the question. I would point to the answer I gave yesterday about this, which does talk about the contingencies for scaling up response and national partnerships that are in place. I am happy to provide that answer again, but it would be the same answer that I provided yesterday.
Ms O’Connor – I do not think the council needs to hear the same answer, but perhaps is there a contingency if there are fires on the mainland, and here – what do we do? The east coast is on fire, so TWWHA catches fire –
Mr DUIGAN – I am happy to quickly take some advice.
Thank you. What I will do is talk about our national resource sharing, briefly. The national resource sharing partnership between Australian states and New Zealand relieves the burden on our state when it is battling natural hazards, but also other states. That gives us access to specialist personnel and equipment available when we need hem.
You raise the point of what happens when everything else is on fire. I think probably the recent experience in Canada points to a more coordinated, multi-national effort. ‘Global effort’ would be the answer to that question – noting that is not something we have had to countenance yet, but there are arrangements in place. As we send our personnel to Canada, we would expect that there would be something similar in return.
