Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Bushfire preparedness

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (16:31): I rise today to contribute to the grievance debate, and I grieve for the people of country Victoria today and particularly those in the far east of the state. I do not grieve for them for the shocking condition of their local roads – I have done that before – or for the lack of infrastructure investment or the soaring cost of living and massively increased state debt. Today I grieve for the lack of bushfire preparedness in our region.

Just four short years after we should have learned the lesson of a lifetime we see ourselves in a very vulnerable state again. Following the 2009 bushfires we had a royal commission, and it recommended that at least 5 per cent of the bush be burnt on a rotational basis to keep us safe. These are the pre-eminent bushfire scientists in the country saying you have got to burn at least 5 per cent. Some who presented to that 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission recommended 8 per cent, in line with what occurs in Western Australia, but we settled on 5 per cent. In 2015, after this government came to power, it decided to head down a different path, and it set up its own new inquiry. Why we needed another inquiry after we had had a royal commission I am not sure. But it came up with a new inquiry to come up with a more palatable outcome for what it wanted, and what it has done is it has ended up with a lot less fuel reduction burning being done. This new approach basically said we are only going to focus on fuel reduction burning around the townships and around assets – that is where we’re going to focus our fuel reduction burns, it is no use burning out in the wider bush. This new approach was called Safer Together, and our Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water, Lisa Neville, said at the time:

Our new approach is about doing more to reduce the risk of bushfire, and knowing what we do is more effective.

How did Safer Together go in 2019–20? It did not go real well when it had to pass the test of a hot summer. Under Safer Together, just five years after Safer Together came in, we saw probably the second-biggest bushfire in our recorded history in the state.

There are a couple of points I want to make. Firstly, many locals saw this coming, because under Safer Together they knew that the fuel loads in the bush had reached record levels that they had not seen before in their lifetimes. These people came into my office, stopped me in the street and approached me at coffee shops. They were former firefighters, they were departmental staffers or they were old timber industry workers. They were people who had worked in the bush all their lives, and they said to me, ‘We’re going to have a megafire because we’ve allowed fuel loads to increase out of control’. I am not saying this after the event because in 2019, in October, I wrote a lengthy column in our local paper based on what these people who had lived in the bush all their lives were telling me, that if it was not this year, it would the year after or the year after.

Anyway, it happened. It is not rocket science. If you allow fuel loads to build up to record levels, how is it ever going to end apart from a megafire? There is no other way it can end. It is as simple as that. When we have a warming climate and we let fuel loads build up to the levels that we have, it is only going to end in a horrible, horrible situation, and we saw that. So while the bushfires royal commission, our pre-eminent scientists, recommended 5 per cent, no, we got a group together in 2015 that said that is going to cost a bit much; it is a bit hard to do. They came up with a program since then where we have only had 1.5 per cent of the bush burnt on a rotational basis. Now, when the recommendation from our pre-eminent scientists is 5 per cent and they come up with 1.5 per cent, I mean, the world has gone mad. We are just not listening to the people who know. The result was a 1.6 million-hectare fire – 396 houses destroyed. There were lives lost under Safer Together. We are safer together because we are burning a lot less of the bush. We are not safer, we are more at risk, and we continue to be at greater risk. Because of the current huge fuel loads which now exist four years later because of all the dead trees, the debris and the black wattle infestation – country members have seen all this – a very flammable undergrowth has grown back after the fires. We now find ourselves in the same situation, and those same people who warned us this was going to happen are warning us that it is going to happen again – and it will only ever end in major fires.

When we have these major fires the Greens come out – there are none in the chamber at the moment – and they shout ‘climate change’. It is the only reason. A warming environment is part of the puzzle, but whether we have got climate change or not, summers are hot and record fuel loads are going to end up in megafires. You cannot just simply pluck climate change out and say that is the cause. We should be doing more burns. We should be doing more cool, controlled burns throughout the year to make sure that we restore the balance of the bush, because we put out all these lightning strikes and fires in summer, and when the cooler months come we do not restore the balance. If we let those fires go, they would be simmering away for three or four months over every summer, but we go in and we put them out because we want to protect our communities. But you then have to restore that balance that you have altered, and we do not restore that balance. I want to quote Professor Kevin Tolhurst from the University of Melbourne, probably one of the most pre-eminent bushfire scientists in this country but certainly in this state. Just two weeks ago he said:

The legislation of restricting fire has been counterproductive to a large extent.

He said:

… we really need to change our whole philosophy of having fire in the landscape.

He strongly supports reintroducing more low-intensity fire into the landscape, and he is correct. He is 100 per cent right. He is saying what the wise old heads in all of our communities keep coming and telling us. He strongly supports more year-round burning more regularly and creating a mosaic outcome of fuel reduction burns. It is a situation where we are miles away from that outcome that not only the bushfires royal commission recommended but experts like Professor Tolhurst are recommending.

You can get away with it for a while, this Safer Together fluffy stuff. You can get away with that for a while, but it is always going to catch up with you. When the fuel loads build and build and build, you might dodge a bullet one summer, but it builds and builds and builds. And it caught up with us not only in 2020 but in 2009 and 2007 and 2003 – all major, major, major fires. Dr Tolhurst – I think I promoted him to professor before – summed this up very well when he said:

We should be going in and burning … areas as often as we can to break up the landscape, so it’s not much of a stretch from the way the traditional owners used to use fire in the landscape.

As they moved through the landscape they would ignite areas that were flammable as they passed through and they passed through often enough that over time they would continue to burn the most flammable parts –

regularly –

and then you’re left with less flammable areas that would burn later in the summer season.

You can see from these comments it is all about burning regularly and consistently. We are not doing that in this state, and it leaves us in the bush vulnerable.

Let us talk about the effectiveness of fuel reduction burning for just a few moments. I do not know if many members of Parliament saw this – I know a few did – but when we got the map of the footprint of the 2019–20 fires in East Gippsland, it was incredible the amount of times where it stopped where it abutted a fuel reduction burn done in the last two years. I think honourable members have seen that map. In seven or eight locations the fire burnt and almost stopped immediately with no people present. There were no firefighters at lot of these places. They were at some, but in other places the fire stopped of its own accord because it hit a fuel reduction burn reduced area.

One of the best examples was at Painted Line Link Track just out of Orbost. The fire actually hit there on a day of a really hot northerly, and it still stopped it. The fuel reduction burn that had been done the year before still stopped it, and there are great aerial shots around of that occurring. Now, in recent times the government has provided commentary that burning the wider bush is ineffective. I put up the Tostaree fire as evidence that burning in the wider bush is effective. What happened at the Tostaree fire is it was threatening the township of Orbost, and it was in the tranquillity of the night, miles from any township, where it came up against a fuel reduction burn in the early hours of the morning. The intensity had gone out of the fire, and it was there that firefighters were able to get on top of that fire.

Now, we cannot predict where a fire is going to go, and we cannot predict the weather of the day. We have got to maintain fuel loads in the wider bush because it is often going to be in the wider bush where we can stop these fires that the next day might impact on townships. That is why fuel reduction burns in the wider bush are also important. These cool burns that are done are also much better for the environment. Going through the wider bush after 2019–20 was like walking through a moonscape. There was nothing there, everything destroyed, dust on the ground. It is a better outcome for the environment.

In Victoria the government only ever really achieves its bushfire residual risk target of 70 per cent when it counts the wildfire that has occurred. Now, this is interesting. These are the fires that they claim under Safer Together they are protecting us from, but they count those areas to reach their fuel reduction targets. It is a nonsense. The fuel reduction target has got to be the target that is achieved through fuel reduction, so we do not have to count those megafires after the event, after it is too late. So the government says it is protecting against its burn targets and then leaving a more flammable landscape in the years afterwards. This is what we are seeing now.

Now, what happens with a cool burn is it gets rid of the rubbish on the ground, the fuel loads on the ground that need controlling. When we have a fire like we had in 2019–20 that destroys everything, the regrowth of all the shrubs, the black wattle infestation and a bush they call petrol bush because it is so flammable just pop up everywhere. So after a major, major really hot fire we actually end up three or four years later with another explosion ready to occur, whereas if we managed this through regular cool burning, we would never find ourselves in that situation. The minister should go now and inspect the areas that were burnt in 2019–20 in East Gippsland, because what the minister would find now is debris lying all over the ground. She would find a lot of very, very flammable undergrowth, including black wattle infestation right throughout a whole lot of the bush, and she would see a landscape and a scene that is what has got us all very, very concerned about this summer again.

Four years after we should have learned our lesson we find ourselves hopefully dodging a bullet, but we are very, very likely going to have significant fires in the east of the state again. You know, I had a briefing with the CFA on Friday a week ago where they said our soil moisture content in the east is as low as it has ever been before. That does not augur well for summer when we as a collective have allowed fuel loads to get out of control. It can only end one way.

To make matters worse, before I finish, as everyone from the country will know, when the proverbial hits the fan, the first line of defence is our timber industry. They are in there, pushing the firebreaks with flames and sparks around their cabins. They are doing the hard yards; they are in there protecting our communities and putting their lives on the line. That is what they have done year after year after year, and recent years have been no different. So now we are faced with our first line of defence being taken away – removed, the timber industry gone – massive fuel loads in the bush and the government continuing to trot out this rubbish that we are safer together because we are burning a lot less just around the townships. We are fair dinkum living in fantasy land. We are living in dreamland if we think that we are safer because of this new burning program that has been introduced.

It is time we got serious about this, we started listening to the experts and we started putting in place regular burns to make sure that our communities are protected. And if we are going to get rid of the timber industry, for goodness sake, while we are sorting out what goes on there, let us put a whole truckload of those fellows and their machinery and those families on contract to look after us for at least the next two summers.