MCGRATH:
Mr Howard, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning.
MCGRATH:
There's a lot of blame being passed out this morning, not about the performance of emergency services on the day but about pre-planning. Now honestly what do you think about the pre-planning here in Canberra?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that's something the local government has to deal with, I don't have responsibility for the fire services in the ACT, these things are always handled at a state or territory level and that's not meant to shift responsibilities, it's just to state a fact, I can't answer that. All I can say as layman, as an observer, is that it always amazes me that there are not more lives lost and there is not greater devastation and I don't think anybody can gain say the fact that the firefighters and the police and the ambulance did a magnificent job in very difficult circumstances. But as to the technicalities of whether there was adequate this or that beforehand you'd had to take that up with the local authorities. I do know this however that we are in Eastern Australia experiencing probably the worst drought in 100 years and that the severity of that drought has contributed enormously to the precarious tinderbox nature of the environment and you can imagine that what happened at the weekend was a freakish conjunction of a very hot day, bad winds, dry undergrowth, all of those things coming together in a quite uncontrollable fashion.
MCGRATH:
Given that and the fact that you're talking about the drought, this may happen again to another community in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria over the next weeks, days even months. Now the question of resources, in Sydney prior to Christmas days and days of fires, homes lost but not lives lost. What can regional communities do, a city like Canberra, 300,000 people, people would think enormous resources, but it couldn't cope. So to country Australians, people outside of Sydney, what do you say to them this morning who think well what happens when a fire comes to my town?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well nobody can give an absolute guarantee about the ravages of nature, I'm not going to try and do that.
MCGRATH:
Can the Government do something... should the defence forces being doing...
PRIME MINISTER:
No, no I think that is completely misunderstanding the role of the Defence Force, they're not trained to fight fires, they're trained to defend the nation and fight wars and there's a huge mistake so often made in Australia when you have some kind of disaster people say call in the Army, that is unfair on the Army, it is, in our system of Government it is the responsibility of states and territories to provide things like police and power and emergency services. We can augment that in a very general way with some helicopters and aircraft and things like that out of the Defence Force, and defence personnel not specifically trained for the task can be called in aid, but there are no better firefighters in Australia than the volunteer local community firefighting services that are actually trained to do it and I think it's also important when something like this happens that we don't within 48 hours sort of lapse as a nation or as a community into an orgy of blame, I think we have to sort of help each other to respond to the immediate crisis and co-operate at every level of government and then when things have settled down work out if there are any lessons. Now ultimately that is the for the relevant state and territory authorities from a firefighting point of view to decide but clearly when you have something of this magnitude you should be willing, when things have settled down, to ask questions and so forth but I don't think it should be in the context of trying to point fingers of blame.
MCGRATH:
Prime Minister, as the leader of the country, is there anything today, this week, next week, you as the leader will be looking at to try to make sure that there is more pre-planning that can protect communities?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think the first thing is to establish whether it is ever possible to guarantee that something like this can't happen again. I think it's always very hard to guarantee things. I think it would be incumbent on all governments after things like this have occurred to see if there are lessons that can be learnt but equally I think it's a mistake to cast around in a knee jerk way to apportion blame, you can have freakish one in hundred year events. I mean it is the view I understand of Phil Koperberg the New South Wales Rural Fire Commissioner that we are experiencing one in one hundred year events and circumstances. Now you may not agree with him but he has a certain amount of expertise in the field and I don't likely dismiss his views.
MCGRATH:
Prime Minister, just finally, financial assistance for those affected?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have standing arrangements and as soon as...
MCGRATH:
Anything on top of that...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well if the ACT Government has a particular propositions that it wants to put to us, and thus far the Chief Minister has said that all the requests made of the Commonwealth have been met in full, we'll have a look at them but there are standing arrangements and a growing proportion as the cost rises of those standing arrangements are funded directly by the Commonwealth so we are already contributing in a very significant way to all of the emergency assistance.
MCGRATH:
Prime Minister thanks for speaking to AM.
[ends]