Page 2967 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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that, while there are strong encouragements in the act and the plan, we do not have concrete requirements to ensure that land managers meet obligations.
Thirdly, what are the concrete requirements stating when draft BOPs must be submitted, as opposed to saying that it would be nice to have them under this government? Fourthly, who are the land managers? We have urban services, environment, et cetera, but who are the specific land managers within those agencies under the current government? Are they the senior executives? Are they tasked with individual areas of responsibility? Fifthly, who are the private land managers under this government for the purpose of combating the strategic bushfire threats in the ACT? I am talking about any land managers, private or public, who are seen to own land in areas which are strategically important to the bushfire prevention plan for the ACT. I would argue that those are questions that, if we had a second, more detailed and more authoritative version of the SBMP, would be answered if this government had taken the issue of bushfire management prevention seriously.
In terms of what should be included in the SBMP, some of the points I am about to make may help the emergency services minister, Mr Corbell, do his job when he gets around to finalising the SBMP. We throw these on the table and we ask the government to steal them and use them now for the sake of this community. The first point is that the minister, the bushfire council, commissioners, et cetera, must identify all land managers, both public and private, for the purpose of bushfire prevention. They must convey to land managers what their obligations are and when they must complete them, when tasks such as bushfire operational plans, specific land clearing and hazard reduction have to be completed. But that is not being done adequately under this government.
Secondly, the chief officers of the RFS and the fire brigade, or their delegates, must audit the land managers’ areas. Land managers who are identified as owning lands embracing strategic areas must have their tasking audited. They must be able to be directed to undertake certain duties if either the RFS or the fire brigade believe that such action needs to be taken to aid in the prevention and mitigation of bushfires.
Thirdly, the BOPs must cover responsibilities, but they must also designate those vulnerable areas—Chapman, Duffy and Tharwa—that need to have specific fire prevention and response plans in place. I would argue that perhaps every vulnerable suburb needs one. Others would argue that we should at least have a BOP for each mini-region, maybe a mini-region of two to three suburbs. We do not even have that at this stage. In fact, we do not even know what we have. The last understanding I had was that we had probably three or four BOPs at most for the entire territory. If that has changed, I would welcome an update, but we have never been told and we keep asking.
Plans must be flexible, which is the next point that I would ask Mr Corbell to pick up and run with, as the nature of a fire is not always predictable. Various actions should be required, depending on, for example, the direction a fire might come from, south-west versus north-west. Finally—and I would ask Mr Corbell to grab this one and run with it—plans must also cover the need for residential evacuation in specific suburbs and in vulnerable areas.
Speaking of vulnerable areas, I seek leave to table a map that highlights the ACT’s urban bushfire threat. It is not perfect. It is what the Canberra Times ran from a map that I gave
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