Native Vegetation (Road Verges) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 18 June 2015.)

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (10:55): I am pleased to continue my contribution in relation to the bill the member for Morphett has brought to the house. From memory, I was making some observation and remarks in relation to the previous chief officer of the Country Fire Service, Mr Euan Ferguson, when he would come and speak to community meetings and provide briefings to us and others in relation to how best to prepare a property against the risk of a bushfire.

I was illustrating the fact that Mr Ferguson said that fuel of the diameter of a pencil or a pen is such that it catches on fire very easily. If an ember blow comes through or some fire comes through that smaller fuel catches first and then, obviously, the bigger items of fuel catch on fire and it goes from there. It has a snowballing effect, if I could use that as a description. It makes sense, and I said previously that this is a sensible approach and a reasonable proposition to mitigating the risk of bushfire damage and reducing the effect of a bushfire being able to spread across the landscape.

It therefore makes sense that, if you are able to reduce the fuel load in and around your own property, then, obviously, it makes sense to carry out that work further out into your rural holding, as the member for Morphett has. His wife owns a farm—a beautiful property, actually—down in Meadows. My wife and I own a few acres up in a different part of the Adelaide Hills. It makes sense to clean up your property and to collect that fuel and to dispose of it accordingly—build a big bonfire and burn it through the winter months.

It therefore makes sense that along the road lines, on the road corridors, the road verges you would carry out the same work. I know myself that immediately adjacent to our property, on the other side of the Paracombe Road, there is quite a number of gum trees growing and some old wattles that have died, but I have got on to the local council. This generally is a local government issue; it comes under local government jurisdiction.

I know the fire protection officer quite well in the Adelaide Hills Council, and I have contacted him and he has had some work carried out on a section of road adjacent to my property and my neighbour's property, because pretty much everybody who lives in the Adelaide Hills, as I have said on a number of occasions in this place, live in a very high fire risk area. It is one of the highest fire risk areas in the world actually, and I have said that before.

So the member for Morphett's bringing this bill to the house makes absolute sense because if you are able to clean up along your road verges it obviously reduces the risk of fire being able to spread across the landscape. Where you have heavy, dry, dense fuel on verges, it has been described to me as acting like a wick on a candle. If a fire comes through—and it might be burning several kilometres away, but if it is a day of strong winds we all know that the ember blow can blow those embers and start fires ahead of the actual firefront. So if you have these road verges of dense, dry material and high fuel loads it acts as a wick to start another fire, so you have fires leapfrogging in front of the actual firefront. We saw that in the Sampson Flat fire back at beginning of the year in January, and we have seen it right across the landscape on days of catastrophic conditions and severe, extreme conditions when fires do occur for one reason or another and start spreading across the landscape.

As I said, the member for Morphett brings a sensible approach and a reasonable proposition and he has shown me some photographs of how he has cleaned up along his verges. I have spoken to a number of CFS brigade captains and they are fully supportive of this proposition. So if the people on the ground, the volunteers on the ground who go out and attend these incidents and look to keep our communities safe and secure by putting these sometimes horrendous fires out, are supportive then surely we need to take notice of these people—the senior officers within the CFS volunteer brigades—because I know they have spoken to the member for Morphett and the same people have spoken to me. I think it is definitely worthy of support, so I commend the bill to the house.

I also want to talk about an issue that has been raised—and some people in the community will say, 'This just gives carte blanche to cut down beautiful, majestic eucalypt trees.' Well that is not the case at all; we're talking about the grasses, the fallen limbs and the branches that are lying on the ground. Nobody is talking about clear-felling avenues of gum trees down roads and so on, because when a fire comes through, it catches that fuel on the ground.

As the member for Morphett said, the actual flame height is usually three times the height of the fuel, so if you get a hot fire going in that heavy undergrowth on the verge it will catch up into the canopy of the trees, and then it is very difficult to manage when it is in the canopy in the trees. The only effective way to deal with that is through aerial firefighting water bombers, the aircraft that are used. As I said, nobody is talking about clear-felling great tracts of roadside or anything like that but it is a sensible, reasonable approach to this. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (11:04): I also rise today to support the bill to amend the Native Vegetation Act and I commend the member for Morphett, a good hardworking member in touch with his community, for once again bringing a bill of this nature to this place.

As we have heard, the bill will allow property owners to clean up their road verges in their area without having to go through the stifling red tape of applying to remove native vegetation and also the cumbersome state government and local government regulations as well. I think this is very much a common-sense bill. It is a common-sense bill to reduce red tape, which goes to the heart of common sense.

We have all, in recent times, been made aware of bushfires far too close to home. Deputy Speaker, you might say to me, 'Does Hartley have any of this bushfire zone?' and the answer to that is: it is right on the border. The north-eastern part of my electorate actually runs quite close to the Morialta Conservation Park. If you look at areas like Auldana, once again, that is very, very close to areas of dense native vegetation. Morialta Conservation Park is laden with dense vegetation and so it is really important that we do consider these things, because they are very close to the city. At the moment, you will see in parts of Campbelltown Council and also Burnside Council that some areas actually have a low to moderate fire rating, even now in winter.

I would also like to pay tribute to the many voluntary organisations in my electorate who do a fantastic job fighting fires but also cleaning up in many emergency situations. I had the privilege earlier this year to actually visit the Campbelltown SES, a wonderful group of people. They are absolutely tireless. It is quite touching when you go there to see this sense of community, the sense of warmth and the fantastic job that they do putting their bodies on the line to make sure that they fight fires and get to these emergencies and make the community as safe as possible, and they go where others dare not.

We also have the wonderful Burnside CFS and Norton Summit CFS, and I would like to also congratulate and thank them for their ongoing support in putting out fires close to and around our area. The member for Morphett has, I note, consulted with many of these groups, and there is no real opposition, as far as I am aware, to the bill.

It is worth noting that there is definitely confusion that exists because of the current application process, which prevents people from doing, if you like, the right thing, as they have been too scared to clean up at the cost of worrying about whether they are doing the right thing. To me, that seems absolutely ridiculous. If we, as members of parliament, can cut through that red tape and make the community a safer place and they can get on with the business of actually looking after their local area—we have heard from many of the speakers before us that a lot of the time these embers could be prevented from flying through the air to create smaller bushfires when the main ones are starting. If we can create laws that cut through that red tape to allow the average farmer or property-owner in the country to clean up native vegetation to stop that outburst of fire continuing and growing, why wouldn't we do that?

I commend this bill. It is a common-sense bill by the member for Morphett. I congratulate him for bringing it to the house's attention, even in the face of adversity. He knows it is a good idea; he believes in it. Let's by all means have that battle of ideas and, if we need to tweak it, fine, but it would be foolish of the government to not support this bill. Why wouldn't we cut through the red tape that exists in fighting fires? Why wouldn't we do it? We need to help people. We need to give them the tools to fight these fires.

I acknowledge that there are groups out there that do a fantastic job; no-one is taking anything away from them and what they do and what they aim to do, but if we can make it a little bit easier, we can stop the doubt. Obviously, there are property owners out there who have doubts, who are worried to do certain things because they think they might be breaking the law when they remove this native vegetation. Let's make it easier for them. What is the downside in making it easier for them? Let's just make sure that they have no doubts so that they can go out, clear this vegetation if it poses a risk, and prevent fires because, like I said, it is not just about the country: a lot of the outskirts of the city are close to these areas.

As I mentioned, not much would have to go wrong in the dense bushland at the top of Morialta Conservation Park for that to really get into a residential area, and I do not want that to happen. That is why I will always stand here representing my area, making sure that we give emergency service volunteers the tools they need so they are equipped to fight these fires. Let us also do whatever it takes to enable homeowners, the property owners, to be reasonably equipped with the tools they need to fight fires in and around their areas. I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.R. Kenyon.