Page 3976 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 17 November 2015
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The last two recommendations are perhaps the most important, Madam Speaker. After the disastrous 2003 fires the federal government did a report. Peter Kanowski was on that committee along with Stuart Ellis. I have forgotten the name of the third gentleman; I do apologise. One of the things they developed was what they called the bushfire cycle. I call it the cycle of complacency. What they said in the bushfire cycle was simply that there is a major event and governments, like they do, respond. Often a large amount of money and resources are put to the problem to address it.
Then you have the coronial inquiry and the various other inquiries that you might have—royal commissions et cetera—and there is general government acceptance. There is another round of funding and assistance provided to emergency services and communities. Then because of the very nature of fire, the fuel loads have been cleaned out, particularly in significant areas in significant events.
It does take some time for the fuel loads to build back up. In that time people forget. We are human beings. We tend to put the bad behind us. We remember the good and many move on. You then get communities saying, “Why are you doing controlled burns? The smoke is making my washing smell. You are affecting this or affecting that.” Governments themselves think, “We have put a lot of money into the issue. We got new equipment; we got new uniforms; we trained up more volunteers.”
Government can run into the trap of thinking that they have done enough. But the situation always changes. For instance, the threat we faced in 2003 was entirely different from the threat we might face today. Because there was such large-scale destruction of the woody areas up there in the Brindabellas, it has come back as huge gorse or heather. It is quite thick; it is quite deep. In some places you could not drive a truck through it. We face a different sort of threat.
The fires of 2003 have left large numbers of enormous trees standing that are dead. They are ready-made fuel. They have now been curing for 12 years. It will go off and the ground fires that will facilitate that can very quickly, if there is enough vegetation, become crown fires that travel at extraordinary rates.
You only have to go to the RFS’s own website to see the history of bushfire in the ACT. Fire events started to be recorded in 1911. There were major fires in 1919, 1920, 1925, 1926, 1938 and 1939. There were major fires in 1951, 1952, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985. In 2001 we had a significant fire that made a run. It was lit by an arsonist in Uriarra and Coppins Crossing. It made a huge run. Who can forget the images of it running right up the gates of Government House and, indeed, almost jumping Adelaide Avenue and almost getting to the Mint?
There was a report done. It made 109 recommendations that the then Labor government received, most of which were not acted on. So by the time we got to 2003 the die had in many ways been cast. It is against complacency that we must guard. It is about the renewal in volunteers, for instance. After 2003 we had an enormous upsurge in the number of people who volunteered and trained. But there were no fires for many years thereafter.
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