Page 306 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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I have draw attention to the experience of the bushfire at Yarralumla in December 2005. I have spoken about the standards of the bushfire breaks along the urban edge of at least 22 suburbs. I have referred many times in this place to the five to 10 metre wide bushfire breaks on the western or south-westerly aspects of the urban edge. All we are saying is that you ought to have a strategic bushfire management plan that lays down a standard—be it 30 metres, 40 metres or 50 metres—for bushfire breaks to be constructed in those vulnerable areas. That should be a best practice benchmark.
In addition to firebreaks, we, of course, say that risk analysis must be undertaken to identify priority areas. The minister quite rightly said that you will have random patchwork breaks prepared in vulnerable areas. We entirely agree with that and we have said that before. So bushfire breaks are simply only part of the preparatory work that would be undertaken.
Mr Speaker, we have been told that requirements for bushfire operational plans are already in place. We do not agree with that. I do not know whether we have three, four or five bushfire operational plans covering the whole of the ACT. I can never quite get a clear answer on that. We believe that bushfire operational plans must be prepared for every vulnerable suburb, every vulnerable settlement, every vulnerable geographical location, every vulnerable area identified, and I illustrate again Mount Stromlo as an example of that. Those are the plans under which our people would operate.
Mr Speaker, the minister said that a Steve Pratt bushfire operational plan would therefore mean that there would be five different plans for each area. He has entirely misunderstood. What we are saying is that a bushfire operational plan would carry the same common information that is promulgated by the government and emergency services for bushfire preventative work. So every BOP would carry information which is common to all but, in addition, that bushfire operational plan would then identify local area miscellaneous information. For example, the risks to Mount Stromlo are very different to the risks to Gordon. So the BOP for Mount Stromlo, in addition to laying down the standard information for every part of this territory, would include tasks and risks identified peculiar to Mount Stromlo and the Gordon bushfire operational plan would list the same for those tasks relevant to Gordon. And this is what the government has missed out doing. Mr Speaker, we are concerned that the act, whilst reasonable and better than what it replaced, simply needs to be strengthened to provide better protections for the ACT.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
Question put:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
The Assembly voted—
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