Page 462 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella): I think that, as always, it is difficult to comprehend the magnitude and the speed of what has occurred over the weekend. What started as a weekend and finished as an absolute disaster is just so typical of what the Australian bush can do when these fires commence. And the litany has been read out: Hobart in the sixties, Ash Wednesday in the eighties, 1939, and unfortunately we will now add another date in another community.
The magnitude of what has happened is something we will reflect on in time. I note that Premier Brumby has already announced the setting up of a royal commission. I think it is very appropriate that, right from the start, there is a path of learning that will come out of this. We learned so much from previous fires, and there is always something more to learn. The landscape itself changes, the technology changes, the way we approach these fires changes. So the royal commission is an appropriate way to bring all of that together.
My family and I went to Melbourne for the weekend for my wife’s uncle’s 70th birthday. On the way down, in the middle of the Hume Highway, were large A-frames on trailers saying, “Have you got your bushfire plan prepared?” As we drove through Melbourne, these posters were in the front yards of schools and on fire stations. So even though that raised level of awareness was there, until it strikes you and until you are caught up in it, it is something that you cannot understand.
As we drove back up the Hume on Sunday, where it jumped the highway was about 15 to 20 kilometres long. There was the same sort of carnage that one saw after the bushfires here in 2003—a house, a property, totally destroyed, while one 50 metres away was untouched. There were trashed cars, burnt cars, injured wildlife and stock. After where it had crossed the highway, certainly to the Victorian border, there were hundreds of kilometres of smoke. Sometimes visibility was down to 500 metres. You take that in, but can you understand it?
We have to genuinely look at where and how we live and how we respond to this because it will occur again. Each time, as we improve what we do, unfortunately the bushfires seem to have no regard for that.
To the firefighters down there, I join with my colleagues in commending them on their efforts. To the SES, the police, the ambulance services, the metropolitan fire brigades, and the ordinary people who helped, without the training and the protective gear that they should have had, I offer my praise. It is important that we remember that it is not over. As the minister just said, there are 95 Canberrans down there now. I understand that, through the Department of Territory and Municipal Services, things like our animal recovery and disease control centres, at which we have two trailers, are ready to go should they be called. So this job now of looking after the wildlife and the stock that are left and that have survived and are injured is on a scale that is simply hard to imagine.
At the local level, what can we do here? The Red Cross has an appeal. If you are able to give blood and you have not given blood this week, there is a call for blood. In particular, the treatment of those with burns uses a huge amount of blood. So if you are a regular donor, check the schedule and go back if you can. If you are not a
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