Fran Bailey (McEwen, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the proposal to establish a joint parliamentary inquiry into the devastating and tragic Victorian bushfires. Prime Minister, what is the reason for rejecting such an inquiry and from whom was advice sought? Given the Victorian royal commission will not present its report during the life of this parliament, will the Prime Minister reconsider his decision in order to preserve strong bipartisan cooperation by this parliament?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for McEwen for her question. On the question of how we best examine what has happened with the Victorian bushfires most recently and what we can learn from them so as not to repeat those mistakes in the future, the judgment of the government is that the royal commission in Victoria should be allowed to proceed unfettered by an overlapping inquiry from the Commonwealth, whatever form that inquiry would take through the Commonwealth parliament. Secondly, the response of the government is that, given that the framework, or the scope, of the Victorian royal commission will deal with Victoria only, it is the Commonwealth’s intention to approach each state and territory government to undertake their own investigation of their own natural disaster protection arrangements, including for bushfires.

We are concerned here to learn properly from the experiences in Victoria. There are five other states and two territories in the country. Therefore, this matter of how we best deal nationally with the scourge of bushfires and other natural disasters and proper preparedness will be dealt with at the upcoming Council of Australian Governments meeting. It is important that the royal commission in Victoria proceed unfettered by a parallel and potentially overlapping inquiry at the Commonwealth level. Secondly, the judgment of the Commonwealth is that we need to make sure that proper investigatory arrangements are undertaken in each state and territory concerning their existing policy settings for dealing with natural disasters generally and bushfires in particular.

The judgment of the government is that that is the right approach. It will be the approach that we discuss with heads of government of the states and territories at the upcoming Council of Australian Governments meeting and, subject to the deliberations at that meeting in terms of any further action which may be necessary in this House or elsewhere, we will be attentive to the contributions from other participants in that COAG meeting.