Page 522 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 February 2013
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We certainly welcome them when they are spent well, and that is what we always call for when government is managing these things.
Of course, we have seen what has happened in a number of other areas. We have seen the ESA requiring funds from the Treasurer’s advance in 2011-12 for operational capabilities but, of course, not necessarily for ongoing purposes. When you look at the government’s other priorities where it does throw money away, where it has questionable priorities, you do question why this money would not have been provided in an ongoing way.
Further to this, we have seen the federal Labor government end funding for the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre. The Bushfire CRC has made an enormous contribution to bushfire efforts since its establishment, including raising the understanding of extreme fire behaviour, better protecting firefighters and improving prescribed burning strategies.
Whilst the opposition are acknowledging some of the improvements that are there and we are certainly supporting the sentiment of congratulating our ESA staff and volunteers, I think we have had some very important voices in this debate raising some concerns in recent times. I think we need to be mindful of those. It is worth putting some of those on record here, because certainly some of those are people whom I respect, people whom the opposition respects.
We have seen the 10-year anniversary of the Canberra bushfires in January of this year. Of course, Phil Cheney studied bushfires for more than 40 years and led the CSIRO’s bushfire research division. He was interviewed by the ABC recently, and he stated:
… the mountain forests are accumulating fuel and in my view if they’re to be managed properly and to limit the spread of fire … we need to do something.
The concern was also shared by Val Jeffery, who ran at the last ACT election. For years he led the independent Bushfire Council that was responsible for fire management. Val Jeffery notes the high runs of fuel into the built-up areas. When asked, “How do you think the Canberra region would fare if it saw another repeat of the circumstances that we saw 10 years ago?” Val Jeffery replied:
Canberra will suffer a lot more because of the simple fact the fuel structure and the bush fire organisation’s changed that much that if we get that bad day again it’s inevitable that we have those big losses.
I hope that on this Val Jeffery is wrong. I hope that the warnings of people like Mr Cheney and, indeed, Mr Jeffery are taken seriously by this government, because we do not know what the future holds when it comes to weather. What we do know is that we will suffer from dry conditions at some point in the future—maybe next year, maybe the year after, maybe in five years time. We do not know when the next drought will come. We do not know when the next potentially disastrous firestorm day will come.
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