Tuesday, 15 October 2019

 Mr BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (18:11): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police and Emergency Services and concerns the Mallacoota neighbourhood safer place. At high-risk periods Mallacoota can have up to 5000 tourists in town, with an established population of 1000, 60 per cent of whom are over 60 and with quite a number in their 80s. There is only one designated road out of Mallacoota, the Genoa-Mallacoota Road. However, you really do not want people leaving the area, as it is such a long drive to get anywhere through bush. The council and the CFA have two different incident management plans for Mallacoota. This can only cause confusion within the community and will put lives at risk.

The safer area is just a location on the foreshore for people to congregate out in the open. I think the objection relates to not having a fire-rated community building that could shelter people—a community fire refuge—with access to services such as water, toilets, supplies and so on. Also, the designated safer place does not cater for those with special needs, which is particularly relevant for Mallacoota where a vast number of the population are aged, have significant mobility issues, would struggle being out in the open and may not have the mobility to access a boat to evacuate onto the water. There are currently five community fire refuges in Victoria, none of which are in Gippsland. So the question is: why is there not a community fire refuge in Mallacoota, given that there is nowhere to evacuate to and given the demographics of the community?

Mallacoota should have seen the implementation of recommendations 3 and 4 of the Black Saturday royal commission relating to communities categorised as ‘very high risk’. However, these appear not to have been acted on, which is staggering, as the Mallacoota community has been categorised as at ‘extreme risk’. Recommendation 3 begins:

The State establish mechanisms for helping municipal councils to undertake local planning that tailors bushfire safety options to the needs of individual communities.

Recommendation 4 begins:

The State introduce a comprehensive approach to shelter options …

The action I seek is for the government to work with the local community and emergency services to implement recommendations 3 and 4 of the Black Saturday royal commission in the Mallacoota community before it is too late.