State Emergency Management Plan

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:17): Supplementary, sir: can the minister provide some explanation to the house as to how a draft plan not communicated to SAPOL officers could possibly be adequate in times of an emergency?

The SPEAKER: Before the minister answers, I call the member for Schubert to order for interruptions during the last answer. Minister.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety, Minister Assisting the Minister for Health, Minister Assisting the Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:17): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have spoken to both the commissioner and the senior sergeant who is in charge of this area, and they assure me that if there were such an event in which this plan needed to be used, then it would be used today and would be rolled out by the local LSA in charge of the Adelaide area, to deal with an emergency if that were to happen.

There is final consultation happening on this plan. As you can imagine, it is a very complex set of arrangements. We need to deal with Transport, we need to deal with Health, we need to consider our hotels across Adelaide and what would happen to people there. We need to consider the whole range of different capabilities and the whole range of different threats that would happen if such an event were to occur. That is why you can't just invent these things overnight; they take a bit of time. We do have a draft plan. It is a plan that is being worked on with agencies now, and by the end of the year it will be a finalised plan—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The Leader of the Opposition will have every chance to have a look at it then, but it is something that our police have now, and if they needed to use it right now then they would. Can I also add that I think in particular, we need to thank our police, we need to thank our emergency services personnel, who did an excellent job this time 12 months ago. They did an excellent job of ensuring that people were safely able to leave the CBD and were able to safely transport their way home. In fact, I am informed by the commissioner that there was a significant reduction in terms of the usual crashes that you would see for a particular day such as that. In fact, the system worked quite well.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: What we do need to make sure in the future is that there could be a significantly worse event—a significant event where a huge number of people need to be evacuated, including everybody from hotels or hospitals and the like. That is why there has been a significant amount of work underway in relation to that plan. There is a significant amount of work being undertaken with agencies, but our police have the plan ready to go if that were to happen now. The final plan will shortly, before the end of the year, be finalised.

Mr Marshall: Supplementary, sir.

The SPEAKER: Before the supplementary, I call to order the members for Davenport, Morialta and Stuart and I call to order the leader and the deputy leader. I warn for the first time the members for Schubert and Morialta.