Page 302 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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managers and landowners, in identifying risk areas and putting in place “resilience plans”.
What the bill will do is enshrine the strategic bushfire management plan in the act, provide the ESA with the authority to hold people accountable for their duties and put in place a benchmark for all bushfire management actions to be carried out. Now what is wrong with that? There is nothing wrong with that. It is an appropriate thing to do, knowing what we have all learnt in the last four or five years. The bill also provides that bushfire operational plans be created for all identified vulnerable suburbs, settlements and key geographical areas. And, yes, there may be overlap. The December 2001 fire occupied a relatively small area in comparison to the fire of January 2003. It ran from the Stromlo pine forest to the edge of Government House. It got up to Glenloch interchange and it got into the back of Curtin. There needs to be a plan for that. But if you had a geographical area that stretched from the top of Belconnen to the bottom of Tuggeranong then, of course, the minutia of detail that is required and can be required would be lost.
I will give you an example of why this is important, and how it can work. The Pittwater Rural Fire Service, which uses both boats and vehicles to service the people of Pittwater, for years has had a computer system that looks at their entire operational area neighbourhood by neighbourhood. This goes down to houses, access routes, emergency escape routes, expected number of occupants, can you get there by water, can you get there by land, routes in, routes out. They have gone down to that level. They have it all on computer, they can tell you what is in a neighbourhood, they can print out maps of varying scales and it is incredibly effective. And this is what Mr Pratt is talking about. It is about having a plan that fits the scale. And is it a big job? Yes, it is. But is it worth doing? Of course it is, because the way in which emergencies occur differ.
If you look at a number of very sad recent events, say in the last 10 years, you will find that volunteers have been killed in relatively small areas of fire—back-burns that go wrong and cut them off in a small pocket of vegetation, and a small area can be just as deadly as a big area. Mr Pratt seeks to highlight that unless you are willing to reasonably address the scenario of situations that you will face then you are simply not prepared. The way that you best prepare is to have the plans and hope that you never have to use them.
Mr Pratt’s suggestions are all very valuable and sensible. Indeed, they are very much matters that are based on a commonsense approach to preparing for and responding to the threat of bushfires. In the opposition’s judgment, there are major deficiencies in both the Emergencies Act and the strategic bushfire management plan. The major concern that we have is that these deficiencies lead to a position where our community is not protected in the way that it should be.
Version 1 of the strategic bushfire management plan was finally developed in late 2004. Unfortunately, it fails to set out the detail of what such a plan should contain. The strategic bushfire management plan must be an action plan. It must have clear directions and it must have tasking for emergency services staff, land managers and the general community with respect to bushfire prevention as well as emergency response. As well, the Emergencies Act needs to be most emphatic about the way in
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