 |
| Goodna Flood 12 January 2011 looking east from Barram St Goodna towards the Ipswich Motorway |
The Premier said the royal commission-style inquiry that she established last year, four days after Brisbane's flood, had left "no stone unturned" in its examination of the planning and response to the widespread disasters.
Ms Bligh said yesterday she had not been asked to extend the inquiry's final reporting deadline past March 16 and the election remained on track to be held eight days after the recommendations and findings were handed down.
"The floods inquiry was put in place to get some very big and important answers about how we managed as a people and as a community in different levels of government," she said.
"I would hope that nobody has forgotten just how big those disasters were and how much they stretched every single part of our disaster and emergency response."
The commission reconvened this month for 10 days of public hearings after The Australian revealed inconsistencies in official documents that suggested flood operators were employing the wrong strategy in the crucial days leading up to the flood.
Engineers deny this and contend there were reporting errors.
The inquiry's extended deadline delayed Ms Bligh's preferred election timing and put back the state's council elections.
"I look forward to the final report, where hopefully we will see some of the answers that have perplexed people about the operation of the dam," Ms Bligh said.
"There is only one thing I want to know about the operation of the dam and that is the truth."
Closing submissions from all parties will be given to the inquiry tomorrow and Wednesday, but will not be revealed publicly until the final report.
At the end of public hearings that have traversed the state, Justice Holmes on Saturday night gave a spirited defence of her inquiry and its outcomes.
The Appeals Court judge said the inquiry had already improved disaster services across Queensland and it "would be foolish to disregard that work".
She said she was "grateful" for the work of Hedley Thomas, a senior journalist with The Australian, in identifying "fundamental" questions examined in the final hearings.
The last day of evidence examined in detail the engineers' understanding of water-release strategies dubbed W2 and W3.
Justice Holmes, who remarked she had "become slightly obsessed with W2", said that it would appear the operations manual was "confusing".
"It doesn't make it clear W2 and W3 are alternatives, not a series of steps," Justice Holmes said.
Senior flood engineer Robert Ayre said the W2 strategy was "a bit of an abstract concept".
"It is something that you need to use the model to determine," he said. "I think that people conceptually struggle with it."
Fellow flood engineer Terrence Malone defended the final report.
Asked if the engineers had to set the record straight, Mr Malone they were "writing the record as it happened".
W2 was at the heart of the extraordinary hearings because the reporting inconsistencies from the time of the flood indicated the engineers were operating in W2, but subsequent formal reports said they were in W3 on January 8 and 9. Engineers said they had applied the strategy labels after the event.
13.2.12
