Page 50 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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developing fire awareness in inner Canberra as well. The community building involved will benefit more than fire preparedness.
Let us see a lot more emphasis and resources put into community fire units. Let us see weekend workshops on how to fireproof our houses. Let us see building codes that ban highly flammable building materials from being used in areas where the fire risk is high, and let us see those codes enforced. Brush fences on the urban fringe are an unacceptable risk to households and their neighbours.
Perhaps households can apply for a permit to be allowed to stay and defend their houses if another fire threatens Canberra. To obtain such a permit would require a household firefighting plan and an assessment by a firefighting expert of the risk levels posed by the house and garden components. Incentives could be offered to install a bushfire protection system, which, incidentally, needs hurrying through the standard-setting process, to protect homes and gardens. It is interesting to know that the emergency centre itself was threatened by fire and had no system set in place to stop it burning, had that happened. No longer will we think we can rely on having water pressure for our hoses to fight a future fire.
Education about how to live in our bush capital should start early. In these days of talk about national curricula, there needs to be a role for place-based learning about our history, including fire history, our geography and our unique environment.
It was a wise, though late, decision not to replant the pine plantations, and after the way they burned on January 18—and before, at least twice—there will be few regrets in our community. However, the pines are regrowing; they have become weeds in our landscape. They are the responsibility of our land managers, the Department of Territory and Municipal Services. I am not the first to ask how they will be managed—removed—and I am aware that the government is so flummoxed for ideas as to how to use the land on which the plantations stood that ideas as inappropriate as a large arboretum of 100 rectangles of mostly imported trees have been suggested, instead of looking at innovative and suitable plantings of drought tolerant species such as the city of Geelong has planted at its amazing botanic gardens.
It is reassuring to hear that the government plans to report on its implementation of the McLeod recommendations. However, it needs to do more than congratulate itself on its progress. It needs to look squarely at the obstacles to progress and to set in place initiatives to address them, or give good reason for rejecting them. I await with interest the Auditor-General’s report on the same matter.
The January 2003 fires happened under the Stanhope government’s watch. Mistakes were made and most of us would feel better if they were admitted; but I wonder if a Stefaniak or Smyth government would have acted differently. Other jurisdictions learned from our disaster, but did we?
I move the following amendment to Mr Stefaniak’s motion:
Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute “expresses grave concern:
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