Tuesday, 17 March 2020

Warrandyte electorate bushfire preparedness

Mr R SMITH (Warrandyte) (13:57): In November last year along with my colleagues I received a briefing about the upcoming 2019–20 fire danger period from the emergency management commissioner and departmental staff. After raising concerns directly with the commissioner and requesting information about the level of preparedness in the Warrandyte electorate in particular, Mr Crisp said that he would have a response emailed through. After numerous emails I was finally sent these two lines of barely relevant information, which said, and I quote:

We are also working closely with local government, partner agencies and private landowners to reduce bushfire risk in Warrandyte. Much of the risk profile is situated on private land, and requires collective effort to address. In the Warrandyte area, 66 hectares of annual fuel break and roadside slashing is conducted annually and 10 planned burns have been undertaken in the last 5 years.

In response to these two lines I requested greater clarification, to which I have yet to receive any response despite repeated requests over the course of the entire fire season. I am not getting any response through writing directly, so I will ask them here. In what way are you working with local government, partner agencies and private landowners? Who are the party agencies and what is their role in reducing bushfire risk? What collective effort is required to mitigate the risk profile on public land and what oversight is there to ensure this is being done? Where and when, specifically, have the 10 planned burns over five years been done? And over what area were these planned burns done, both in hectares and as a percentage of the public land within the Warrandyte electorate?

All I am seeking is clarity on these statements that were made by the department itself. For my community, who lives with the threat of fire every summer, it is simply not good enough to give them a couple of baseless media lines and be arrogant enough to say that that is enough.