Page 46 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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community with them. The colour coded escalating levels of alert give me some hope that this will be the case.
I have a final comment on this issue, with relation to the climate crisis that confronts us. First, because so many species will be affected in ways that we cannot predict, it is important to retain contiguous corridors of native vegetation appropriate to the terrain. This is likely to mean that future enlightened governments at federal, state and territory levels will require and reimburse farmers to manage parts of their holdings as wildlife corridors, and our national parks will become crucial refuges for native plants and animals, and we should not compromise that now in a knee-jerk response to perceived future danger to ourselves and our property.
Second, we need to be cognisant of the contribution of fire to our greenhouse gases load. This is not a minor matter. It is estimated that carbon dioxide emissions from the 2003 conflagration in Victoria released around 88 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a few weeks. If we add to this 12 months deficit in photosynthesis due to the denuded forests, the number increases to around 120 million tonnes of CO2, or over twice the total CO2 emissions from all forms of transport for the whole of Australia for a year. This means that we need to be very strategic indeed about our control fires, to ensure that they burn rather than smoke, that they are short in duration and of the minimum rather than the maximum area required to do the job of wildfire retardation. The coroner’s recommendations do not address these points.
There are many matters I could raise in relation to the coroner’s report, but time precludes me from referring to more than a few of them. I appreciate the day-to-day descriptions she has given of the fires and efforts to suppress them, as well as actions in government, the bureaucracies and the media to make sense of what was happening and to turn this information into public awareness, or not as the case may be. I strongly endorse her suggestion that fire access tracks be maintained so that they are accessible at all times of the year, except when they are too wet and fire is not an immediate threat, although the placement of tracks in terms of the integrity of the park should not be trivialised, and their placement obviously requires environmental expertise.
I also understand that the coroner, like many judges, magistrates and court officials, is frustrated by the administration of the courts remaining within the department of JACS and I agree with many of her concerns about the potential threat to the separation of powers. The Greens have mentioned these matters many times over the years. However, I am not sure that it was appropriate to make recommendations about these matters in a report on the January 2003 fires, although she has certainly elicited a reaction from government by doing so.
I endorse the government’s stated commitment to a review of the Coroners Act 1997, something the Greens have been pushing for some years. We hope to have the opportunity to contribute to the draft terms of reference soon.
Finally, I note that the coroner made disparaging comments about several officers and the Chief Minister at various times throughout her report. I wonder about the value of these when they are not substantiated in her findings and recommendations. Of course she was frustrated at their apparent lack of memory on matters of interest to her and
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