Page 782 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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management plan at this stage will simply tie up those resources that are better aimed at achieving outcomes, not generating more paper.
The ACT does not have, and does not need, a bureaucracy of fire management that would result from Mr Pratt’s simplistic proposal. What it needs and what it has are skilled practitioners and planners who can dedicate their time to achieving better fire management through works on the ground, not through generating more mountains of paper.
Let us be realistic, however. To think that this version of the strategic bushfire management plan or its successor addresses all of the issues would be dangerous. The same applies to bushfire operational plans. The current plans are very effective and are being applied. However, they are not static and there will always be room for improvement. This improvement will come from the findings of research, such as through the bushfire CRC or from changes to government policy and definitely not through the creation of “Mount BOP” or through the simple creation of 40 metre wide firebreaks. I commend my amendments to the Assembly.
MR SPEAKER: The minister’s time has expired.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (3.57): I presage that I will not be agreeing to the amendments. I will support the original motion if it remains intact, which we know it will not, with a few provisos.
A new report commissioned by the federal government says that the growing impact of climate change could cause up to 70 per cent more extreme fires by the middle of the century. In the light of the recent Four Corners report—it is not so recent now because we started this debate over a month ago—that looked into the extent of corruption in the setting of Australia’s climate change energy policy, I assume that this was one report that the coal and oil industry did not get to rewrite.
I think it is now clear to everyone that we must manage for worst-case scenario fire events at the urban interface. But we must also recognise that different approaches are required for different areas and that regular burning, slashing and road building are unacceptable and impractical for areas such as national parks and other places with high biodiversity or other high ecological values. In that same Four Corners program CSIRO scientists reported being told not to even use the word “biodiversity”. Perhaps the opposition could use its ready access to the Prime Minister to find out which ecological genius came up with that policy directive.
Under the heading; “Balanced fire management” the Strategic Bushfire Management Plan for the ACT states:
No blueprint is available for managing bushfires and the risks to people and ecosystems they create. Each situation has its own ecological, social, economic and political circumstances that need to be evaluated.
It is interesting that they have put “political” in there. We must not forget the role of politics in the making of policy about fire. We must be careful not to lose sight of those ecological values in the understandable desire, perhaps political desire, to fireproof our
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