Page 2976 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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how to go about reducing hazards in ways that respect the ecological integrity of parks. The haste to get things done and the way that actions like clearing and fire trails are bandied about makes these attractive actions when they may not in fact be the best way forward for fire protection and biodiversity.
On the whole, most people in the community, while fearful of bushfire, are not informed on the hazards and the best means of prevention. Try as the government will, you can give people information but you cannot make them read it; and if they do read it, you cannot make them understand it. With due respect, I suspect that Mr Pratt may be someone who is not an expert on this topic. We are all aware that it is very attractive for governments to be seen to be doing something, whether it is doing burn-offs, where they do not actually protect anything, or cutting down standing trees that look as though they might burn one day. I might add that where there is a lack of scientific and practical knowledge, it has often been handy to target conservation-minded people. So we need to see the next stage of the strategic plan.
I would like to refer to the lack of tangible and definitive goals, targets and directions. It is clearly of concern that we have not had the outcomes from the important informed joint planning process which was to be done to develop version 2 of the strategic bushfire management plan. However, I do not agree that the fault is in this original plan. It is in the putting it into action that we have run into trouble. The disruptions to the ESA and now to the land managers of the ACT can only make this worse in the short term, though some of the changes to the land managers could result in improvements in the long run.
There is a range of specific actions listed under each strategy, such as, on page 42, the strategy to reduce bushfire fuel hazard appropriately. For the purpose of fire trails, bushfire operational plans are intended to identify a two-year works program and site-specific plans. These are not fleshed out here but it is the job of the next phase to do this work. The motion already has us noting this delay with concern. Urban edge preparation is important and householder preparation is an essential part of reducing the risks of fire to life and property, and that is why there are specific actions and goals in the plan along these lines.
Mr Pratt’s motion refers to high risk areas without spelling out what those areas are. The strategic plan sets out methods for assessing risk and identifies high risk and difficult areas, among others. Mr Pratt, however, has taken it upon himself to identify high risk suburbs and, indeed, as we heard in this place in March, to write to people living in those places and tell them he thinks they are in danger. The Canberra Sunday Times of 10 September included a map prepared by Mr Pratt. I am uncomfortable supporting this part of the motion because, despite his obvious enthusiasm, I do not believe, as I said earlier, that Mr Pratt is an expert in the area. In the debate on 29 March I said that 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 nature parks and other places with high biodiversity or other high ecological values.
Furthermore, I would like to point to the partnership role of individual householders and government land managers on the urban edge. I remind the Assembly that more than 50 per cent of the house losses in the January 2003 fires were due to fire attack from suburban fuels. We know that the ACT Planning and Land Authority is currently
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