Page 789 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006

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This government has all the legislation and procedures in place, but lacks the follow through to ensure that sufficient resources are dedicated to this community safety activity. Let us now go back to the government’s bible of bushfire management, the strategic bushfire management plan. In response to many of my concerns and the community’s about long grass, the government often responds to me by arguing that fuel hazards are being managed in accordance with the SBMP. However, it might be interesting to reflect on something that Emergency Services Authority commissioner Peter Dunn said on 25 October 2004. In an ABC Online news grab referring to the coronial inquest into the 2003 fires, Commissioner Dunn said:

We are heading down a path, as you can see from the strategic bushfire management plan, that says we are moving on and you then have to say to yourself, “What if there are findings that would require us to significantly change direction?”

To me that is an admission the SBMP might not be all it is cracked up to be. The ESA commissioner was basically questioning whether or not a complete change of direction might be needed and that the SBMP may be wrong. In fact, we are still awaiting a long overdue formal version of the SBMP as it is actually still in draft form. That then poses the question: why have we not seen the final version yet? Is it because the coronial inquest has been delayed that the commissioner and the minister are not willing to sign off on the final SBMP or are they simply not getting around to it?

This then leads me to seriously question if the government really does know what they are doing to ensure that there is not a repeat of the 2003 bushfire disaster. How can we be confident that the hazard fuel reduction and bushfire threat management policies that we currently have in place are adequate when the minister has not been confident enough to make the SBMP final?

We need to finalise SBMP with very concrete benchmarks for bushfire prevention preparation. We need a SBMP with more concrete tasking and responsibilities for authorities, public land managers and private land managers. We need a SBMP that gives the commissioner of the ESA and the chief officer of the RFS and the fire brigade the authority to determine bushfire fuel load reductions. I reject the minister’s claims that the somewhat useful but far from satisfactory SBMP meets the community’s needs.

Question put:

That Mr Hargreaves’s amendments be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

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