Page 4121 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
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This will not be onerous. Based on the government’s own report into the historical climate and fire weather in the ACT regional review, I expect we might issue 10 warnings at the very high level, probably one at the severe each season, and potentially one or two every three years in the next two categories. This is not hard.
Mr Corbell says that the total fire ban is still there. That is correct. The Bureau of Meteorology will make ratings. They do already. But Mr Corbell has that competing with him now anyway. I have not heard the government say anything about total fire bans. Is the government going to stop doing anything because the Bureau of Meteorology does? I hope they do not. In the case of an emergency, if consistent messages are going out from trustworthy sources, it only helps if they are consistent messages.
I obviously will not get to move the amendment. But what I had were four categories that met the very high, severe, extreme and catastrophic—code red. That is what the national warning system is.
Warning systems existed in Victoria earlier this year. How effective they were and how well they were used and how people understood them is covered well and truly by the interim report and no doubt will be covered further. But the problem is that it is about getting the information out in a timely fashion.
Where we know something based on scientific calculation, based on fact, backed up by more than 50 years of data collection—it is one of the longest data sets in Australia; thank you, Mr Macarthur, Mr Cheney and others, for the work you did in setting up the fuel indexes—all I am saying is: take the next logical step. Do not rely on a minister who cannot be found, a minister who will not decide or a minister who does not want to. Authorise the publication of this so it simply goes out.
We do it all the time now for cyclone warnings. It is an automatic system. The system is done so that there are five grades of cyclone warnings—one, two, three, four, five. Those warnings go out when the cyclones are approaching. Why it cannot go out—
Mr Corbell: My counterpart in Queensland does not issue those warnings.
MR SMYTH: I am working on what I have seen over the last six years, and the last 15 years as a firefighter, about the information we put out. Sometimes this information, for reasons unknown, is held very closely, and it is part of the problem this nation has with bushfires. As a nation, we have to understand them better instead of accepting that they come and they go. There is much we can do to mitigate the effect of a bushfire on us as individuals, as families, as communities.
But the problem is that we do not arm the population with the information and we do not ensure that they get it daily. In a bushfire season, every day now, we issue on the evening news the UV index. Why? Because ultraviolet radiation is a threat to people and we know that in combating melanoma we need to use all the tools that we can.
My system simply says, “The minister will issue”—and it will be the minister through his delegate—“the warning automatically.” It is to give it gravity. It is to get people to
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